Some Thoughts on 2.08 Changes

[Vladesch]

If I'm left to myself I find things the other way around... ie I'll be badly behind in tech in the early game, but by the modern era will have caught up and will most likely be the first to future tech (this is on monarch).

I do tend to go cottage crazy, and like to get academies in my main science cities.

 

[parachute4u]

Basically, a peaceful victory is now a puppetmaster victory, which is probably how it should be, the idea of being able to win without investing in diplomacy or war is a bit wrong.

True. Had an isolated start as Rameses and won cultural, because I had the lead on Liberalism / Nationalism the time I got discovered. I traded some techs and most importantly bribed Monty into wars with the top scorers, while build ing a more than decent navy to join Monty's wars everytime he wanted me to join a war (that I had bribed him to start in the first place).

Fueled by the techs I traded him to start the wars, Monty got VERY powerful, eliminating/annihilating the builder AIs. It was quite funny. Key to victory on monarch level seems to be, to make one or two friends among the AI. Fulfill every request and have them protect you until you have enough artillery and/or fighters. The same worked with Shaka in another game, I ultimately won with domination.

 

[parachute4u]

... I'm not fool enough to think that I can win on Emperor without much fighting, but I like to be partly a builder and know that I can still win on this challenging level. I think Civilization has to be balanced like that. Yeah, sure, I can go back to Prince. But this would prove that a more peaceful style is only for 'noobs' and I won't feel like I have any expertise in this game. It will certainly restrict discussions of strategy except for the lower levels. Imagine: "Playing on Emperor? Declare war asap and kill almost every other civ one by one, if not you're toast. No other way about it." How fun is that?

The higher you go in difficulty the less you are playing the (builder's) game. I think what you do on the highest levels of difficulty is more or less predicting AI behaviour and acting accordingly. In other words: you manipulate the AI, because you know what the AI is going to do under certain circumstances.

If I want to roleplay, I play prince difficulty. It's a nice level I think. Monarch is more like playing chess, IMO. Not as entertaining as prince, but more intense.

 

[aelf]

[1] The higher you go in difficulty the less you are playing the (builder's) game. [2] I think what you do on the highest levels of difficulty is more or less predicting AI behaviour and acting accordingly. In other words: you manipulate the AI, because you know what the AI is going to do under certain circumstances.

[3] If I want to roleplay, I play prince difficulty. It's a nice level I think. Monarch is more like playing chess, IMO. Not as entertaining as prince, but more intense.

I don't see how [1] is connected to [2], and [3] doesn't fit anywhere either. Being a builder is not the same as roleplaying, and I don't think it should rightly be considered or even implied as "noobish", which is often what happens around here. Being a warmonger does not mean you have more skills. In fact, you do more of [2] the more peaceful you play.

Read this:

I totally agree with aelf that this de facto requires a warmonger strategy on higher levels. Which does several things: it reduces player creativity and enjoyment, and it defines "skill" as being the best at warmongering. Both of those things are terribly wrong IMO.

To me, the requirement to exploit the AI weakness at war in order to be successful at high skill levels is NOT skill. Actually, it's the opposite of skill. It's an exploit. It is an admission that you have to exploit the AI rather than using intelligence and creativity to beat the AI at its own game.

Anyway, I hope you realise that this thread is out of date by now.

 

[Breunor]

I guess I agree with most of the posters here. I gnerally think that the better the AI, the better the game. Bad AI has been THE ultra criticism for all computer games over the last 15 years, and it is often true.

Many games have that the computers are much better at economic management than they are at war. Its true with CIV. Its true with HOMM, Total War, Lords of the Realm, Master of Magic, etc. (Try playing these games with no tactical combat and you will see how hard they become!)

So, we have a weird construction that if the AI is made better, but only at buidling, then the disparity at warfare increases. So a good thing may be a bad thing!

I agree wtih posters that warmongering on high levels is the only strategy isn't good; however, I also think it is inevitable. As I've said, I've seen it in just about every computer game I've ever played.

Probably the only solution is to make computer AI grow equally at warfare and at building, but this is very, very difficult to enforce or ensure.


The only real solution I can think of (besides the obvious best solution, make the AI a better wargamer, and then playing the AI on Diety is like playing chess against Fritz a the highest level) is to adjust by having the AI KNOW its not good at war and is a good builder, so have the AI self correct by building more troops and spending less on infrastructure, raising its costs but making it harder to conquer.


So, I'm torn. I like the fact taht the programmers made better AI. I did move down a level, who cares what the name of the level is. My winning now on monarch IS the same as winning before on Emperor, I know that, so I don't care about the name.

However, they did also make warmongering more important, and I agree this is kind of a shame for high level players.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[mrt144]

aelf, stop being a pansy and raise an army

 

[aelf]

aelf, stop being a pansy and raise an army

Stop being a PITA and go back to your FPS games.

 

[Horizons]

I'm having no end of problems with Civ Warlords. Playing on Prince level. Either I play on a pangaea, and get hemmed out and outproduced and outteched and out-armied by everyone, or I play on continents, and am the resident 'savage' when the other civs send their caravels over to my continent and realize I'm a dozen technologies behind them. The rest of the game is then nothing but an unpleasant catchup.

On the other hand, I find Noble difficulty far too easy, with the AIs being reduced to mere punchbags.

The AI is quite obnoxious but that's not surprising in this day and age when most people are obnoxious too!

 

[skallben]

I find it odd some here say all is fine yadayada.
Since the patch Im seeing several annoying things.

*Before we usually had AI:s on different tech-levels, now they all get the techs and trade them around in an extremely annoying fashion

*SPEED! Im playing emperor games and the AI got Civil Service at 100AD!

*Artillery and SAM infantry before we get to see normal infantry, not sure if the AI used to do this before but I can't say Ive seen it before. Getting swarmed by artillery and SAM infantry when you got Riflemen aint fun. Cannon's hardly get used as it is.

And some old issues, Financial being ridicilously overpowered IMO. Rennaisance period goes WAY too fast before its over, now even worse as everything gets speeded up.

 

[Breunor]

I'm having no end of problems with Civ Warlords. Playing on Prince level. Either I play on a pangaea, and get hemmed out and outproduced and outteched and out-armied by everyone, or I play on continents, and am the resident 'savage' when the other civs send their caravels over to my continent and realize I'm a dozen technologies behind them. The rest of the game is then nothing but an unpleasant catchup.

On the other hand, I find Noble difficulty far too easy, with the AIs being reduced to mere punchbags.

The AI is quite obnoxious but that's not surprising in this day and age when most people are obnoxious too!

The 'betwen level' stuff can be bad. For a long time I could win easily on Prince but was frustrated on Monarch.

All I can say is that I stuck with it. It is VERY satisfying when you do get good enough to win on the next level. Keep playing, reading articles, etc. and you should make it. Note that this is true regardless of which incarnation oth the game you use.

Now, I'm stuck between Monarach and Emperor ....

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[skallben]

Discovered another thing...It seems the AI gives away tech for free to their vassal states. Grrr.

 

[mrt144]

Stop being a PITA and go back to your FPS games.

I'm the yin to your yang.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Discovered another thing...It seems the AI gives away tech for free to their vassal states. Grrr.

This annoys the heck out of me, as sometimes these voluntary vassals are only vassals for 10 turns or so, and they walk away with a handful of new techs basically for free.

This surely wasn't intended.

 

[parachute4u]

Anyway, I hope you realise that this thread is out of date by now.

Huh? - What's wrong with you?

Anyway... To put it short: What I was trying to say is, on the highest levels, it is more about exploiting the AI than about roleplaying a civilization.

edit: ok, I have seen it now. Thread is old.

 

[skallben]

This annoys the heck out of me, as sometimes these voluntary vassals are only vassals for 10 turns or so, and they walk away with a handful of new techs basically for free.

This surely wasn't intended.

Actually I just realized something thats possibly even worse...A vassal that surrendered to me refuse to trade away tech's with me with the motivation "We fear you might become too advanced"... *note to self, I really need to pick my puppet's more carefully. Brennus should have died*

 

[rustybabble]

Back to the original point here: I've only played a couple of games with Warlords (and only at Noble level) but I lost to an AI space race victory in the late 1700s and was wiped out by the other six civs on my continent (France and 5 vassals) where France was launching ICBMs in the 1700s. I don't particularly like running roughshod over the AI, but this is a bit ridiculous.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Back to the original point here: I've only played a couple of games with Warlords (and only at Noble level) but I lost to an AI space race victory in the late 1700s and was wiped out by the other six civs on my continent (France and 5 vassals) where France was launching ICBMs in the 1700s. I don't particularly like running roughshod over the AI, but this is a bit ridiculous.

What I personally did (several months ago now) is to make all techs 50% more expensive to research for everyone. But doing this leads to all kinds of differences in the game (barbs appear far to earlier in relative terms for example, so they had to be pushed back too). I've made so many changes to so many aspects of the game, that my own is only vaguely relatable to a "standard" monarch / huge / aggressive ais game these days

I'm happier with it than than standard 2.08 (as it's had the desired effect of pushing tech later down the timeline), but it's still a work in progress......

 

[Willem]

Longer term in another patch (or sooner by modding) the real solution I think is that the handicaps need to be adjusted (in a number of areas not just tech) to account for the more efficient AI (I almost said smarter but I just couldn't make myself say it). Of course one could instead add some easier levels for beginners below settler to balance this out, leaving Monarch as the new Immortal and Diety as an even more unattainable target for us poor mortals.

Blake has already released a revised version of the Handicaps file that is supposed to better reflect the new changes he's made to the AI. Check out the Better AI thread for it.

Incidentally, his changes didn't stop at 2.08, he's made continual improvements since then. Some of the hardcore players might have no choice now but to drop down a level, or even two. No doubt many of his more recent improvements will be incorporated into the next expansion, just like they ended up in the patch. I think we can count on the next XP being a whole new ball game.

 

[Horizons]

Why does the AI found so many cities directly on top of resources now?

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Why does the AI found so many cities directly on top of resources now?

It's a good question. Before 2.08 the AI was just about explicitly forbidden from founding on top of a resource, now it does it with too much abandon. Founding on top of gold, (especially in the early game) is criminal to me, when I've often seen that founding one square either way, farming a flood plain and then working the mine at size 2 is eminently possible, with even better long term squares in the large cross...