MilesBeyond
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2011
- Messages
- 446
After seeing this done in another thread, I decided to try giving it a shot myself. The idea is that you only build cities where the game suggests you build them, and you only produce and research what the AI recommends. I played it on Noble (so there are no handicaps either way), and since I'm a masochist I automated all my workers as well.
As seen before, the game constantly makes terrible suggestions. To give an indication, I did a duel against Freddy as Justinian (both civs were random) and he won a Domination victory after steamrolling my Cataphracts and Musketmen with his Panzers. I think the reason why is that the AI assigns each improvement, wonder and tech to one or more categories. It will then choose two categories to recommend, and randomly choose one potential option from each category. There does even seem to be a bit of method to its madness; for example, I noticed it almost always recommended a Military production in a new city.
But the problem is that it seems to weigh each potential option equally, without taking in ANY contextual feedback AT ALL. So for example, after founding a new city, the player might be prompted to build either a Barracks there for military, or an Aqueduct for growth. Neither of those make any sense at all in the context of a new city. Another example was, with a large force of enemy soldiers bearing down on my city, the game suggested that I build either a Worker (for Growth) or a Christian Temple (for Religion). Huh? It also had an irritating habit of recommending me (through pop-ups, no less) that it was time to expand, even though my economy definitely couldn't handle it, and towards the end there wasn't even anywhere for me to expand to! The game wouldn't recommend any city sites, so my settlers would just sleep the game away.
This also leads to strange scenarios with technology, with some bizarre research choices happening (the game happened to select Religion and Military? Have fun researching either Meditation or Archery!) that again make no sense in the current context. This also leads to some misleading points, because once you've hit Theology, basically the only "Religious" tech left is DR. So, guess what? Every time the game rolls Religion as a path to recommend, it's going to be telling you to research DR. New players will likely interpret the fact that DR's coming up over and over again in the recommendations to mean that it's a really good technology to have.
It's possible that the advisor is actually recommending options for different paths, rather than optimal builds (e.g. If you want to develop scientifically, then here is a science improvement you can build), but that seems silly as well because even for new players those would be mostly intuitive (Banks boost my economy? Jewish Synagogues are religious buildings? You don't say!).
In other words, contrary to popular opinion, the game's advisor does not make you play like an AI, but rather is just flat-out insane.
The point of all this? I propose a new challenge: Win a game using only the advisor-given options. I dare you.
As seen before, the game constantly makes terrible suggestions. To give an indication, I did a duel against Freddy as Justinian (both civs were random) and he won a Domination victory after steamrolling my Cataphracts and Musketmen with his Panzers. I think the reason why is that the AI assigns each improvement, wonder and tech to one or more categories. It will then choose two categories to recommend, and randomly choose one potential option from each category. There does even seem to be a bit of method to its madness; for example, I noticed it almost always recommended a Military production in a new city.
But the problem is that it seems to weigh each potential option equally, without taking in ANY contextual feedback AT ALL. So for example, after founding a new city, the player might be prompted to build either a Barracks there for military, or an Aqueduct for growth. Neither of those make any sense at all in the context of a new city. Another example was, with a large force of enemy soldiers bearing down on my city, the game suggested that I build either a Worker (for Growth) or a Christian Temple (for Religion). Huh? It also had an irritating habit of recommending me (through pop-ups, no less) that it was time to expand, even though my economy definitely couldn't handle it, and towards the end there wasn't even anywhere for me to expand to! The game wouldn't recommend any city sites, so my settlers would just sleep the game away.
This also leads to strange scenarios with technology, with some bizarre research choices happening (the game happened to select Religion and Military? Have fun researching either Meditation or Archery!) that again make no sense in the current context. This also leads to some misleading points, because once you've hit Theology, basically the only "Religious" tech left is DR. So, guess what? Every time the game rolls Religion as a path to recommend, it's going to be telling you to research DR. New players will likely interpret the fact that DR's coming up over and over again in the recommendations to mean that it's a really good technology to have.
It's possible that the advisor is actually recommending options for different paths, rather than optimal builds (e.g. If you want to develop scientifically, then here is a science improvement you can build), but that seems silly as well because even for new players those would be mostly intuitive (Banks boost my economy? Jewish Synagogues are religious buildings? You don't say!).
In other words, contrary to popular opinion, the game's advisor does not make you play like an AI, but rather is just flat-out insane.
The point of all this? I propose a new challenge: Win a game using only the advisor-given options. I dare you.
