Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

I thought it did, but only a small amount. I have no way of checking.

 

I would say neither. Being more powerful than an AI will have a major impact on attitude, but being 500% stronger instead of 5% does not matter. Slavery has no direct impact on attitude.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-attitude.44999/

 

I do not believe the AI declares War over just making workers from one of their buildings or that were captured during a previous war.

I am not sure if anyone has ever played a Civ III/Conquest Game where the AI remains Happy toward them in the end when the Player has Power and is Winning.
The more you gain, the less the AI likes you and even if you give the AI Gold, Techs, Resources and stay generous throughout the Game they will still become Angry or Furious with you as you gain Power.

 

I have, in my rare diplomatic victories, because by then, well, the only way to win is to get on reasonably well with the Artificial Intransigent.
And in my significantly less rare cultural victories I sometimes get a decent level of respect as well.

btw ‘has power’ ≠ ‘is winning’. In my Babs cultural victory last year I had a military just powerful enough to make those big AIs which were powerful enough to invade each other skip my arctic thalassocracy in favour of more attractive pastures, but I would have lost any serious war. At the same time I had a commanding lead in the cultural race which made me a rather early winner.
That game was on Monarch, IIRC.

 

This is simply not true. Gaining power has no effect at all after you already have gained the powerlead. Even with powerlead you can have the AI be "Polite". It is easy if you have a common enemy, but still possible if at peace.

If however you gain power through genocide, then this genocide will deteriorate relations. For each city you raze or abandon less than 20 turns after capture you will get you a permanent malus. Each declaration of war will also give you a permanent malus for all nations that witness the deed.

If you avoid any action that gives you a permanent malus, you will be fine. When you wage war the risk of committing a deed that gives you a permantent malus is higher, but it is quite possible to avoid such deed and hence the permanent malus.

Declaring war is arguably the deed that is least reasonable to avoid. So if you care about AI attitude, then declare war only once per enemy. Ending the war will only be allowed via eliminating the enemy tribe. If you can provoke AI to declare war it is better, but this does not always work in a timely fashion.

 

Yes, there are "Other ways to Win" but I was talking about Conquest. Without raising cities, starting any Wars and helping and dealing with the AI generously, the AI ALWAYS hates me by the End and also Declares War against me. That is the Basic way of the AI. It is best to understand that the AI is ultimately and collectively against the Player.

 

It is possible to achieve the domination victory and still be liked by the majority of the few remaining civs.

 

Of course, the most obvious way is by being allied with them.

 

There's always an AI to turn on.

 

Using HN units will hurt your rep, getting kicked out of someones border will hurt your rep... there are many ways to hurt your rep with the AI, but I think all of them are due to actions from you.

If you sit in your hands all game and just play sim city on your continent, the AI will not become angry with you.

 

Wandering in someone's borders until you get kicked out makes them upset, but it is temporary. Once you are gone they are happy again. It doesn't affect your reputation at all, I don't think, just their attitude.

 

Nah, the AI will always attack you at some point. And if it doesn't then it will regularly drop by to demand stuff from you which usually leads to war if you refuse. Just having a different government type or leading in tech is usually enough to get the Annoyed status.

Regarding playing for UN, the AI getting angry and just playing Sim City, my thread in the General Discussions forum I could turn into a Let's Play to demonstrate this if you wanted, as that's pretty much how that game is going atm. Maybe not a full Let's Play, but I could do summaries every now and then.

 

It does?

 

It's not "proof" but I dug up these threats.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/question-do-hidden-nation-units-cause-tensions.284473/
http://www.codehappy.net/apolyton/threads/89343-1.htm

 

Your foreign advisor definitely 'knows' who owns any HN units which attacked you — as demonstrated by him warning you during negotiations, "Don't forget, the [Tribe X] have attacked us before", even when (AFAYK!) you've spent the entire game to date at peace with Tribe X.

That is, in terms of game-mechanics, the HN flag doesn't mean "Unit's nationality is hidden from the game-engine": it simply means "Unit can attack without declaring war". So the AI-Civs will have that knowledge as well, and adjust their attitude to you accordingly.

 

I made the barbarian units available to the Mongols in my mod, and while testing this, found out I could quite easily enslave all the foreign workers and turn them into slaves without triggering war. My plan was successful.
Of course, the AI knew it was I who was was slaving the workers, so they all had a bad attitude towards me.
Then again, anecdotal evidence is the flimsiest of evidence.

 

Playing Russia at Monarch, Standard/Continents/70%, going for the Spaceship. Was progressing nicely, researching Code of Laws on my way to the Republic slingshot. Popping a goody hut gave me Philosophy early, which resulted in getting Code of Laws "free," forcing me to research Republic, which resulted in losing the tech lead a couple of techs later (though I think I'll regain it shortly). Should I have instead researched Monarchy & traded for Republic later? It didn't occur to me until this morning ... too much further ahead for it to be worth going back, but for future reference if such bad luck should occur again. (And I got lots of huts, including a couple settlers and one straight-up town, which has never happened to me before.)

 

Pure opinion, and not that experienced any more: No.

• If you were not far enough ahead that you lost your tech lead researching Republic I think there was a good chance you would have lost the Philosophy race doing CoL first.
• An extra revolution is massive, and Monarchy is not as good as republic, unless you really want the advantages of Monarchy.

I have never got a "straight-up town", is this not vanilla or have I just not played enough?

 

Ouch! Popping Philo from a hut while you're going for the sling is the kind of 'good luck' that really isn't!

But AFAIK, if you pop a free tech from a hut, it will be the cheapest unresearched tech for which you have the prereqs, and Philo is pretty cheap (about a third of CoL?). So despite being the Russians, it might actually have been better to just stop trading techs and/or popping huts between finishing Writing, and finishing CoL.

Nah, unlikely at Monarch on Continents (maybe on Pangaea, though).

I think it's more likely that having had the slingshot messed up through no fault of his own (apart from continuing to pop huts, anyway!), he had to 50-turn Republic (or close to it), during which time the AI-Civs all went for the cheaper Ancient techs, so ended up with more techs than him — possibly with some of them also just into the Medieval (which is how I read his 'losing the tech-lead').

I don't think WJ was suggesting that he would switch to Monarchy, rather that he would research it — instead of Republic — to use as trade-bait.

But if he was going to have to 50-turn Republic, it would likely have taken almost as long to learn Monarchy — which is a less valuable tech, so he would not have been able to swap it for Republic without adding some extra goodies, that he most likely wouldn't have had anyway.

So continuing to go for Republic was almost certainly the right choice. Then — as Scientific Russia — Lit for cheap Libraries, and Currency + Construction to finish off the Ancient Age, then trade Rep+Lit for 1st-tier Medieval techs if possible.

In addition to never popping barbs from Huts (which seems to make up ~90% of my non-Expansionist Hut-results at Emperor!), Expansionist Civs seem to get higher probabilities on the 'upper-tier' Hut-results (best to worst, IMO: Techs, Towns, Settlers, Maps, Gold, nothing, [barbs!]) than non-Expansionist, even at Monarch.

Or maybe it's simply because they don't pop barbs, so all those 'barb-pop slots' are filled with the other possibilities according to their basic probability-spread (which is probably on a similar scale to the above, e.g. 5%: Tech, 10%: Town, 15%: Tech, 20%: Maps, 50%: Gold)?

(Yes, I'm sure the actual GoodyHut-probabilities are listed somewhere in the dusty archives of CivFanatics, but I can't be bothered to look for them!)