Thanks for your responses, Roland
. I have a few more questions considering those:
In my present (early) game I just failed building pyramids, my one ancient wonder (in spite of having stone
), but got a lot of welcome cash with which I could raise my 20% science rate (I have 5 cities). Is it sometimes worth starting to build wonders for the sole purpose of getting cash?
I rarely try to build the Pyramids in my games. Even with stone, they are about as expensive as 2.5 settlers or 4 workers. But if you're a small civilization, then the representation civic can be pretty powerful. If you grow larger, then the number of cities with the happiness boost is a bit too small for my liking and then I prefer a civic like hereditary rule which doesn't require the Pyramids.
Building a world wonder just for the money can be useful when you have a resource that gives you a production bonus on the wonder. When you're building the Pyramids with stone (and no other production bonus) without the goal of finishing the wonder, then you're essentially converting hammers into gold at a 1 to 2 rate with an unknown delay (you'll get the gold when someone else finishes the wonder). That can be useful if your empire is a bit overstreched and barely capable of researching something. However, often there are better ways to invest your hammers. If you can build a marketplace to improve the happiness in your cities and increase the gold output, then that is often more interesting. If you can build a courthouse in a city with a significant gold upkeep, then that can be more interesting.
It depends on the situation, but sometimes it can be interesting to partially build a wonder to get a good production into gold transfer.
I read somewhere on the strategy forum, that a player generally chose raging barbarians and then quickly built the Great Wall and thus weakened the AI. Do you think this makes sense and are the hammers spent doing so worth it?
In a situation where barbarians are going to be a problem (raging barbarians, slow game speed, open land-based map), the great wall can be a very good investment. Of course the AI will then suffer from the barbarians.
Picking a map type and certain conditions and then using those to get an advantage over the AI is stacking the deck. Nothing really wrong with that of course as no one gets hurt (the AI doesn't have feelings as far as I know
). Just know that if you beat the AI at a certain level while stacking the deck in your favour, the game might be easier than a game at a lower difficulty level without stacking the deck in your favour.
For instance: picking Rome on a duel sized pangea map with balanced resources (ensuring the availability of iron) is stacking the deck. Even on deity level, this should be a winning game for a somewhat experienced player. When you then start claiming that beating the AI on deity level is easy, then of course you're lying a bit.
Of course, the line between a 'good strategy' and 'stacking the deck' is a bit vague. And of course, stacking the deck can be fun sometimes.
I guess I just wonder why the AI couldn't be programmed to semi-randomly (as it does now) make "arrogant demands" of it's AI counterparts, and why the AI counterparts couldn't simply decide whether to accept or refuse those demands based on the same logic with which it accepts or refuses the demands of a human player. When I demand 200 from an AI, does it take account my strength? If so, it could certainly do the same for another AI.
In fact I'd argue that this harms the AI a little bit, because as a human I can make strategic demands for resources and money from any other civilization to improve my lot. A strong AI civ, however, does not have the ability to extort from it's fellow AI
Diplomacy here is a lot better than in the past but it still lacks a bit, I'm finding.
I of course agree that the diplomacy could be improved and maybe Firaxis should have tried to make the AI's make demands of oneanother.
The AI needs to make these demands/requests versus the human to get some idea about the humans disposition versus their civilization. They don't need to do this versus other AI nations for this goal.
If you would let the AI make demands/requests of oneanother in the game as it is, it would probably lead to very bad inter-AI relations. They would probably hate eachother in no time. So something would have to be changed.
It would also lead to the situation where the human still has the advantage that he can see the AI diplomatic rating of his civilization while the AI can't see the real human diplomatic rating of the AI civilizations. At present this is balanced a partly by the AI demands/requests and the lower diplomatic rating that is caused by this. But it is not completely balanced. I can still be nice to someone that I'm planning to destroy. And I'm typically capable to manipulate most of the AI civilizations into a good relation.
In the end, I would also like a symmetric diplomatic situation, but it will never be completely symmetric because the AI has a programmed code. You can easily manipulate the AI because of this code. Give them something and you know that it is unlikely that you get attacked and likely that you can trade with them. You know the tricks to get a good relation and thus you'll be able to manipulate the AI into doing things. If relations are good, then you'll be able to bribe it into going to war with other civilizations.
If this game wouldn't have any diplomacy at all, then it would surely be harder for the human player. If we make diplomacy completely symmetric, then it will become easier for the human player.
What we really need for good diplomacy is for Skynet to become aware. But that might lead to other problems.
You guys have been helpful. I'm going to try to tweak some things a bit more before I try another mod since I like this one a lot. Can anyone tell me if the following attribute(s) in the Civ4LeaderHeadInfos relate to just AI-Human relations or if AI->AI is involved as well.
<iMaxWarRand> (higher numbers here seem to indicate a greater liklihood of war. Of course, if it only occurrs once relations have soured this doesn't really mean much.
<iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio> (and the other PowerRatio variables)
Thanks for all your help!
If I'm not mistaken, iMaxWarRand is a variable that determines the maximum powerratio that allows a random war to occur. So if the variable is 200, then it means that even if someone is twice as strong, then still the AI might go to war with them. Setting this variable too high can lead to very undesirable consequences (dwarf nation declaring war against superpower). Especially since the value is increased by 33% on the aggressive AI setting.
iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio is probably a similar powerrating for nearby wars. Somewhere there is probably a value which determines at what distance a war is considered a nearby war.
You don't want a higher powerratio to still lead to wars. You want the chance that a random war erupts to be bigger at a certain powerratio. It's a different variable that you want to change.
Also random wars don't occur as long as relations are not somewhat bad. For a select few, a friendly relation still allows random wars. For most leaders, relations have to be worse for a random war to occur. That is stored in the leaderhead file (if I'm not mistaken).
I know that the BetterAI mod has changed a number of these values. I don't think it is easy to mod this.
Will barb cities culture flip?
That can happen. You need to have more than 50% of the culture of the center tile of the barbarian city. Units surpress the flipping chance, so if the barbarian city has a large garrison of troops or if you only have only a little more than 50% of the culture of the center tile, then the flipping chance is stil 0.
you can incite wars even if you do not participate in them (expensive) or draw civs into these wars when you fight them yourself... Also you have a big influence in religion spread since the AI is essentially dumb in this respect - you can spread religions that are not your state religion just to have some more variety 
the AI will never do this...
