Selecting your opponents...

[superslug]

In the new stickied rules thread, Aeson has posted a new rule where we are now allowed to select our opponents rather than make them randomized. Now, I'm curious what civ attributes you all might go for?

Darkness has already raised a good point in that thread about using Scientific and Expansionist civs to speed up the tech pace. I for sure will go for Scientific ones to do trading at the beginning of ages.

Personally, I'm thinking this might be fun to use to 'weaken' the AI by stocking them with Seafaring civs (not so great on huge pangaea's). Traits I'll avoid will probably include Industrious and Agricultural civs.

On other thought, are there UU's you will avoid?

It's an interesting rule change, I thought it worth starting a conversation...

 

[fret]

I will be more concerned with selecting Civs for what they dont have rather than what they do. I agree with you - Industrious is a definate no-no.

I suppose filling the AI slots with Commercial traits will be good for me as well because I only play at Reget/Monarch and I dont think the AI gets *any* advantage from this at those levels.

 

[nihil8r]

i think selecting your opponents is teh w3ak! just because on conquests the seafaring one is so ... useless.

what am i saying? conquests is useless, period.

 

[Darkness]

Like superslug mentioned I'll be going for scientific and expansionist AI's for the faster techpace.

Traits I'll probably avoid are industrious and religious, for the obvious reasons.

Also the UU's are interesting. Which ones you want to avoid, etc. Those, for me, probably include the Samurai, Knight and Sipahi...

The naval UU's (for the AI) however are no problem for me...

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by nihil8r
teh w3ak!

What does this phrase mean in english?

Based on what I've read so far, I think commercial and seafaring are definitely good selections, while religious, agricultural and industrious aren't.

In regards to expansionist, I may choose them even if I don't enable huts. That way I don't have to bother exploring that much and they can find me...I'd much rather focus on growing my empire...but that's just one idea regarding my next game's playstyle.

 

[SirPleb]

An interesting topic! Here are my thoughts on this, for high score games. (Different things might be desirable for early wins.)

Traits I don't want my rivals to have

Seafaring if it is a non-pangaea map.

Agricultural, on any map.

Industrious, on any map.

Expansionist, if huts are enabled and I want a slow science pace. (Probably only a consideration at Deity and Sid levels.)

Scientific, if I want a slow science pace (as above.)

Religious, at low difficulty levels. (The AIs can lose a lot of time switching governments repeatedly at low levels. Don't want them to short-cut that, nor to build up culture too easily.)

Traits I don't mind my rivals having

These are roughly in order from what I think I least mind, upward.

Seafaring, on a pangaea map. Does them very little good.

Expansionist, if huts are disabled, or if I want a fast science pace. (Probably do at levels up to Emperor.)

Religious, at high difficulty levels. At high levels the anarchy time for the AIs is capped. Since they're all effectively religious in that regard this trait is less helpful. But it does still make some of their building much cheaper/faster.

Scientific. If I want a fast science pace this should go much higher on the list, could be a good thing for rivals to have.

Militaristic.

Commercial. It is tricky deciding where this goes on the priority list. At low difficulty levels I think I might want Commercial opponents, to build up a bit more and help to keep things moving. At high levels this is a less desirable trait for opponents because of the reduction it gives for corruption.

My rival suggestions for a Deity Pangaea game without huts

Roughly in order:

Portugal expansionist/seafaring
Spain religious/seafaring
Arabia expansionist/religious
India commercial/religious
Scandinavia militaristic/seafaring
Zulu militaristic/expansionist
Mongols militaristic/expansionist
Japan militaristic/religious
Hittites commercial/expansionist
England commercial/seafaring
Rome militaristic/commercial
Byzantines scientific/seafaring
Russia scientific/expansionist
Greece scientific/commercial
Korea scientific/commercial

My rival suggestions for a Regent Pangaea game with huts

Roughly in order:

Russia scientific/expansionist
Byzantines scientific/seafaring
Korea scientific/commercial
England commercial/seafaring
Portugal expansionist/seafaring
Greece scientific/commercial
Hittites commercial/expansionist
Germany militaristic/scientific
Zulu militaristic/expansionist
Mongols militaristic/expansionist
Scandinavia militaristic/seafaring
Arabia expansionist/religious
Spain religious/seafaring
India commercial/religious
Rome militaristic/commercial

 

[superslug]

I am really starting to feel bad. In this week alone, three different individuals have introduced things that are going to save HOF players time. Aeson decided to let us select our opponents, Moonsinger gave us a map generator (probably the hugest nicety) and now SirPleb provides us with excellent reference lists for opponents vs conditions.

My sole claim to contribution is spamming up the forum.

SirPleb, not only are those good lists, you raise excellent points about trait vs effect on difficulty level. I hadn't considered that...

 

[boogaboo]

I currently do early conquest, and the things I would allow the AI to have is religious/scientific.

There is no advantage to gain from being religious or scientific when the game ends before 3000BC..

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by boogaboo
I currently do early conquest, and the things I would allow the AI to have is religious/scientific.

There is no advantage to gain from being religious or scientific when the game ends before 3000BC..

Excellent insight! If the AI isn't around long enough to get a free tech or change governments, there's no benefit whatsoever.

If you enable goody huts, expansionist would hurt. Agricultural is very prime under Despotism (extra food helps fight the penalty). Industrious and Militaristic are just not traits you want to be facing in battle.

I guess the only question mark would be seafaring.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by superslug
In the new stickied rules thread, Aeson has posted a new rule where we are now allowed to select our opponents rather than make them randomized. Now, I'm curious what civ attributes you all might go for?

Enlightening by the new rules, I have begun another Deity game last night with the Ottomans again. However, instead using all random AIs, I selected all scientific civs this time. Basically, Babylon, Persia, Korea, Rusia, Germany, Greece are all in my game (the other two non-scientific civs are Egypt and Carthage). So far, I have the MapFinder ran for about 4 hours last night with mininum domination limit of 4500 ; it generated over 2000 new games, but found only 1 of them starting near the center of the mini-map with river and wheat at the starting position, so I guess I will play that this weekend.

PS: As for C3C, I'm not playing any more with it until they release the next official patch - the real one - not some "beta" crap! Of course, the Mayan will be my pick because I'm currently trainning myself on farming barbs. Basically, I will shoot for an island type of map. Build my empire on one island and setup the barb camp on the other. With barb settings to the max, I should be able to get about 1000 barb workers by 2050AD - my goal is to see how many barb workers I can get by 2050AD.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by Moonsinger

So far, I have the MapFinder ran for about 4 hours last night with mininum domination limit of 4500 ; it generated over 2000 new games, but found only 1 of them starting near the center of the mini-map with river and wheat at the starting position, so I guess I will play that this weekend.

What kind of world are you creating? I'm creating huge, pangea, warm, wet , 5 billion year old worlds and have set the domination lower limit at 3900. So far I have only generated about 8 new games and none of them are over 4000 in about 4 hours of running MapFinder.

I was using the default limits for the time but have lowered them to 1000, 6000, 1000, 4000 and MapFinder seems to be functing properly.

I'm using C3C version 1.15f. I did just manage to save an unacceptable world that had a domination limit of 3693 but had to play in since it had 3 cows and a lake in the starting 9 tiles. This game has givin me the fastest QSC I have ever gotten so I may play it out to the end just for the practice. The Mayans are great fun BTW.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by superslug
My sole claim to contribution is spamming up the forum.

Yeah, right Holding a couple of HOF slots, often being the first to help newcomers and people with questions, and spurring discussions of interesting questions like this thread don't count

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Svar
What kind of world are you creating? I'm creating huge, pangea, warm, wet , 5 billion year old worlds and have set the domination lower limit at 3900. So far I have only generated about 8 new games and none of them are over 4000 in about 4 hours of running MapFinder.

If you go with the continent setting, you would find a lot of map with domination limit of at least 4000 or greater. With the tight island group setting, there is a 7/1000 chance of getting map with domination limit of 4500 or greater.

I was using the default limits for the time but have lowered them to 1000, 6000, 1000, 4000 and MapFinder seems to be functing properly.

If you have a fast machine with lot of RAM, you can decrease those number a little more. On my P4 3.4GHz machine, I set mine to 1000, 3000, 1000, 2000. Anyway, if you lower yours to (1000, 5000, 1000, 3000), you would save only 2 extra seconds per iteration which isn't much. In any case, just set it up before you go to bed and it will be running for 8 hours instead of 4 (assuming that you do sleep 8 hours each day).

 

[superslug]

@SirPleb: Kind words, sir!

@Svar: Good questions, I meant to ask those myself!

@Moonsinger: Thanks for the Domination information.