Something is very strange in my game...

[Rombizio]

Hello all, new to the forum, this is my first post.

I noticed some strange things happening in my current game, Epic, Pangea (generated by all settings random, random personalities, random seeds on King). I am playing as Ethiopia. No new patch yet.

1 - I got 300 Faith but the Great Prophet did not appear. When I had 307, Venice found a religion and only on the next turn I was allowed to create mine. What gives? I lost the lead on that and I specifically aimed for an early religion.

I reloaded the game to see if that was a bug. Remember I have random seeds. I had the exact same issue, this time with my faith at 305 instead of 307. I simply could not found a religion first. Why is this happening?

2 - I gave up the religion start and decided to work towards a science victory now since I am way in the lead on that. I tried to build Hagha Sophia, Borobudur, Great Wall, Parthenon, Chichen Itza, and some other 2 Wonders. Venice got them all except for one that Denmark got. Funny enough, 2 turns before I got my Wonder, Venice didn't even have any techs on the Medieval era. In one turn they got the tech, jumped to the era and got 2 wonders. Next turn they got another one. Exactly the Wonders I was building. Virtually impossible to do as a human player, even if I had GS and GE available.

I reloaded the game again to a previous saving point and decided to build the wonders in a different order completely. I got the techs in different order too. And guess what? The AI did not get ANY wonders. Not even one. I have 12 Wonders now and they have just 1 or 2 each. What is going on?

My theory for the first problem is that the game "cheats" to prevent you for getting something already "allocated for the AI" on the religion side. For instance, I NEVER got Jesuit Education. the AI always get it. Why would the game only give me the Great Prophet after the AI found their religion, regardless of the Faith points I had?

My theory for the second issue is that the building order really affects (based on some internal score?) the AI behavior so if you get things on a specific order the AI will be either or very aggressive, or very passive.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

 

[Browd]

I think you've placed a bit too much emphasis on getting the first religion. In any event, there is no "AI gets it first" or "reserved for the AI" in the game. You are not assured of getting a Great Prophet automatically when crossing the relevant faith threshold (300 faith on Epic for the first GP). Once you hit 300 faith you have a random chance on each turn of getting a prophet, with the chance increasing as your faith increases. For all you know, Venice didn't get their GP until 3, 5, 7 or 10 turns after passing the faith threshold. All you know is you got a GP with 307 faith and, after reloading, 305 faith. If you reloaded again, you might not get a GP until you had 375+ faith (it's happened to me!).

As for the quick wonder after entering Medieval, perhaps Venice finished Liberty, took a GE and rushed the wonder.

 

[Rombizio]

Ah, good explanation. Thanks. Do you think the Ai is more or less aggressive based on the building order of wonders?

 

[Browd]

if by "aggressive' you man militarily aggressive, there are several active threads discussing that issue, but I don't really have a view on that issue.

If you mean aggressively building wonders, that varies considerably from game to game, including after reloads. For example, a wonder-oriented civ can get derailed from wonder-building by a DOW from a neighbor, but what might trigger that war can be affected by whether one AI's city bought this or that tile when its culture borders expanded, or this or that unit got killed in a run-in with a barb.

A while back, I played around with what effects gold-purchasing of tiles would have on AI settlement behavior. The results were pretty interesting, even though the direct outcomes were fairly predictable -- buy this deer tile and that gold tile and the AI settler will veer away to settle somewhere else. More interesting were the knock-on effects -- that settler forward settles on AI#2 and a DOW comes in 10 turns, or maybe he never settles and is still wandering around 40 turns later. All "butterfly effect"/RNG stuff.

 

[Koiranputki]

Ah, good explanation. Thanks. Do you think the Ai is more or less aggressive based on the building order of wonders?

Good question....I know there have been discussions about this, but I still don't quite get the wonder building algorithm when it comes to the AI snagging a wonder that you are close to completing. How exactly do the AI "decide" which wonders to build?

In one recent game as Venice I missed getting the Globe by several turns, which actually was carelessness on my part. I had a GE and also a diplomat in the city that built it. So I decided to do a "test'.... I reloaded an autosave and this time watched carefully what that AI did.

As things unfolded and I got the tech to build the Globe, at no time during the run-up to getting the tech did I see the city building the Globe...I then rush-built it with my GE and again checked the city. No attempt to out-rush me with one of their GE's.....

My conclusion was that somehow through game algorithm or a spy the AI knew when it had a chance and when it didn't of getting the wonder....

Anyone care to opine????

[Aside: And as far as "bugs"....I assume that in general game play there are no material bugs left in this game....there might still be a few in unusual combinations of events but nothing major.

The assumption I make, such as with your great Prophet example, is that if something I expect isn't happening then I'm either not understanding or overlooking something....

 

[Rombizio]

if by "aggressive' you man militarily aggressive, there are several active threads discussing that issue, but I don't really have a view on that issue.

If you mean aggressively building wonders, that varies considerably from game to game, including after reloads. For example, a wonder-oriented civ can get derailed from wonder-building by a DOW from a neighbor, but what might trigger that war can be affected by whether one AI's city bought this or that tile when its culture borders expanded, or this or that unit got killed in a run-in with a barb.

A while back, I played around with what effects gold-purchasing of tiles would have on AI settlement behavior. The results were pretty interesting, even though the direct outcomes were fairly predictable -- buy this deer tile and that gold tile and the AI settler will veer away to settle somewhere else. More interesting were the knock-on effects -- that settler forward settles on AI#2 and a DOW comes in 10 turns, or maybe he never settles and is still wandering around 40 turns later. All "butterfly effect"/RNG stuff.

I actually meant for Wonder building. Your example does show that are many changes in the AI behavior that have to be initiated by the player or another AI. Sometimes they play quite aggressively in the beginning and stop advancing fast after a certain era. Sometimes they build everything they can all the time.

 

[Rombizio]

"My conclusion was that somehow through game algorithm or a spy the AI knew when it had a chance and when it didn't of getting the wonder...."

That would actually be cool if it was true. But remember that in such cases, you can simply get ALL the wonders in the game my going wide and building one wonder per city.