stressed when 1 turn remaining?

[erhaminus]

I have started playing on Emperor recently. Because it was one of my first games on this difficulty I tried to do my best. But the AI was forced me to quit the game.

I ran to Temple of Artemis. When only 1 turn left, after pressing "End of turn" it was built by another player. OK, it happens. But because it was on Emperor and it was one of my priorities, I did what I usually don't do - I loaded the game ~20 turn earlier and started choping down forests like mad. It gave me at least 4-5 turns extra (on Epic speed). But... wait... when 1 turn left to complete and I pressed "End of turn" the same civ built this wonder before me.

So, I am asking what is going on, it is quite common to fail 1 turn before but this.... Emperor or not this looks like damn cheating...

 

[Sabrina]

Happened to me too, not only on emperor (just tried once) but happens a lot on prince & king. Sometimes reloading and relocating citizens for production (or chopping forests) helps, but most of the times it just feels like the AI has all the wonders you want queued and waiting until you are 1 turn from finish them to spawn a GE and complete them before you do.

 

[Lochlann]

Happened to me too, not only on emperor (just tried once) but happens a lot on prince & king. Sometimes reloading and relocating citizens for production (or chopping forests) helps, but most of the times it just feels like the AI has all the wonders you want queued and waiting until you are 1 turn from finish them to spawn a GE and complete them before you do.

Occasionally I get the urge to play a game where I completely dominate the globe in all metrics. (Prince or King level, usually.) When I play in this style I routinely set out to build all the Wonders, and sometimes that requires the procedure you've described: noting what turn the AI finished the Wonder, loading an earlier game, and changing hammer yields to make sure that I finish the Wonder before that turn.

I have never--not once--encountered a changed AI completion time. If the AI finishes a Wonder on turn X, then it will always be on turn X, on each and every loaded game. No matter how far I go back, no matter what I change on my end, etc. The completion turn has never changed in order to beat my new & improved build time.

I've been doing this since Civ III, including all iterations of Civ V, with random seed and without, and I am quite OCD about it. Thus I've got a very large sample size. I'm not sure how to describe the discrepancy. I know that others have experienced my version of things--there was a thread about this a little while back on the BNW board, maybe ~1-2 weeks ago--but I also know that others experience what you're describing. I can't explain it.

 

[Sabrina]

What you posted makes all the sense, completion times should remain unchanged, unless they have a spy in my capital that can see on which turn I would finish the current wonder, then rush to finish it faster. More than that would be really cheating but seriously, IDK if the AI would use a spy to see which wonder I'm building just to steal it from me, it just feels like that YKWIM?

 

[joshua43214]

I had Cathy do this to me on a mid/late game wonder, but I am sure she had a spy in my cap. I kept reloading trying to get the wonder, finally loaded to the turn I started it on and did a full hammer/starve the city push and she rushed it with a GE

I have never had this experience when they do not have a spy. Where you in the renaissance?

 

[Frossa]

I had Cathy do this to me on a mid/late game wonder, but I am sure she had a spy in my cap. I kept reloading trying to get the wonder, finally loaded to the turn I started it on and did a full hammer/starve the city push and she rushed it with a GE

I have never had this experience when they do not have a spy. Where you in the renaissance?

Temple of Artemis is the absolutely earliest wonder you can build...

 

[Rohili]

I play on Emperor currently and generally have been successful in beating the AI to wonders by reloading. So I don't think the AI cheats (at least not in this regard). It might have just been an isolated coincidence - the AI does not necessarily pursue the same build order each time you reload and it might have coincidentally decided to start building the wonder earlier or decided to improve different tiles to yield more hammers.

 

[joshua43214]

Temple of Artemis is the absolutely earliest wonder you can build...

and on Emperor you can make it into Renaissance before it goes...

 

[Qoma]

One thing I have noticed is that if you reload a game and then repeat the exact same steps you did before, the AI will also do the exact same thing it did (I've seen this by doing plenty of spying*coughcheating* with the InGameEditor). But if you change what you did, IE move this crossbowman over there instead of over here, start building a bank instead of a university, etc, then the AI will do something different as well. From my experience, it sounds like you just have some bad luck in this situation... your reload and change of strategy maybe also prompted the AI to change its strategy, in a way which also made it get the wonder faster.

But, who knows, you could be right - in this situation, the AI may be out to get you. Just relating experiences.

 

[dnrojas7]

Could go to an either save file, declare war on the AI and/or bribe others to do the same to have the AI not focus on building the wonder

 

[Frossa]

and on Emperor you can make it into Renaissance before it goes...

He said it was one of his priorities, why would he wait until the Renaissance?
Also, in what game of Civilization V have played that has the Emperor AI never build the first wonder that becomes available?

 

[Walter R]

Occasionally I get the urge to play a game where I completely dominate the globe in all metrics. (Prince or King level, usually.) When I play in this style I routinely set out to build all the Wonders, and sometimes that requires the procedure you've described: noting what turn the AI finished the Wonder, loading an earlier game, and changing hammer yields to make sure that I finish the Wonder before that turn.

I have never--not once--encountered a changed AI completion time. If the AI finishes a Wonder on turn X, then it will always be on turn X, on each and every loaded game. No matter how far I go back, no matter what I change on my end, etc. The completion turn has never changed in order to beat my new & improved build time.

I've been doing this since Civ III, including all iterations of Civ V, with random seed and without, and I am quite OCD about it. Thus I've got a very large sample size. I'm not sure how to describe the discrepancy. I know that others have experienced my version of things--there was a thread about this a little while back on the BNW board, maybe ~1-2 weeks ago--but I also know that others experience what you're describing. I can't explain it.

That's certainly a lot of data, can't argue with you there!
I offer this anecdote:
Back when I used to play on Warlord and as England almost exclusively I always went the same tech route through optics and built the Great Lighthouse. In one game I missed it by a couple of turns, which never happened before - so I went back to last save (just before I'd finished optics), stopped building worker immediately on finishing optics instead of waiting the few turns for him to finish, changed city priority (I didn't know much else about city management then) and...still missed it, pretty sure by same number of turns. As I recall I tried this again and could not get it whatever I tried. In those days (all of a year ago!) that felt like enough reason to start over so I did. I certainly can't remember what my hammers were or any other specific details, but it did feel at the time like the AI was going to stop me getting that damn lighthouse come what may.
(Nowadays I'm building a settler, library or NC at that time in the game so I don't care who builds it - and chances are it will be mine one day anyway )

"Why HMS Victory, you seem to have sailed further today?"
"Yes indeed, we captured Thebes don't you know!"

 

[Smokewood]

reloading? As in loading up a saved game to try and do things differently this time? lol and you call the AI a cheater??? I have NEVER gone back and tried again. Just play to win and let the cards fall where they may.

 

[Rohili]

reloading? As in loading up a saved game to try and do things differently this time? lol and you call the AI a cheater??? I have NEVER gone back and tried again. Just play to win and let the cards fall where they may.

That's ridiculous. Reloading has been part and parcel of virtually every single player game. If you fail/die, you reload and try again. No one is being "cheated" of anything; certainly not the AI which is just a bunch of code.

On the other hand, if the AI does have undisclosed advantages over the human, then that is a problem. The player is entitled to expect the AI to play by the same rules, and get only those bonuses that they are supposed to get for a particular difficulty level.

 

[sendos]

reloading? As in loading up a saved game to try and do things differently this time? lol and you call the AI a cheater??? I have NEVER gone back and tried again. Just play to win and let the cards fall where they may.

This. And welcome to CFC.

 

[Lochlann]

reloading? As in loading up a saved game to try and do things differently this time? lol and you call the AI a cheater??? I have NEVER gone back and tried again. Just play to win and let the cards fall where they may.

Sigh. Yes, welcome to the forums, and also welcome to the idea that anyone is free to play the game as they like, and that shaming/criticizing them for not playing according to some arbitrary standard is unwelcome. (As is one's assertion of superiority and/or correctness by citing the same standard.) The question/issue raised here is a legitimate one, regardless of one's preferred method of enjoying the game.

 

[danaphanous]

I'm doing an emperor game as well. Not only do they sometimes do this, they also seem to know what you are working on as well. I don't reload often but tried this same thing once. happened to notice that when I switched a wonder to another one, accepting I'd lose it, the one he completed switched to the new one I was working on as well. strange...after that point I just said "screw it" and moved on. You win some and you lose some. No sense being anal about it...and the gold bonus is pretty nice. The one time I lost by a turn I got like 800 gold off it!

 

[Smokewood]

Sigh. Yes, welcome to the forums, and also welcome to the idea that anyone is free to play the game as they like, and that shaming/criticizing them for not playing according to some arbitrary standard is unwelcome. (As is one's assertion of superiority and/or correctness by citing the same standard.) The question/issue raised here is a legitimate one, regardless of one's preferred method of enjoying the game.

Sorry if I came off that way... I just thought it was "funny" that they were talking about the AI "cheating" and then in the same breath talked about how they reload a saved game from a few moves back to try again...

I don't understand how one can go back and change what they did, and then feel as if they accomplished something when they pull off a victory.

In my humble opinion, if you reload a saved game to try and get a different result, you've already lost the game.

How many of the hall of fame entries are reloads?

 

[Lochlann]

Sorry if I came off that way... I just thought it was "funny" that they were talking about the AI "cheating" and then in the same breath talked about how they reload a saved game from a few moves back to try again...

I don't understand how one can go back and change what they did, and then feel as if they accomplished something when they pull off a victory.

In my humble opinion, if you reload a saved game to try and get a different result, you've already lost the game.

How many of the hall of fame entries are reloads?

That's a perfectly valid opinion, and I don't necessarily disagree with any of it. But my point is that it isn't the only opinion. Just for starters, definitions of "accomplish", "victory", "lost", and "cheat" vary widely across the Civ community -- to say nothing of the human species! The only universal & objective goal of the game is to have fun, and many players' ideas of fun in Civ have little to do with the kind of ironman play you're describing.

Speaking purely for myself, I occasionally get the mood for a "let's see just how thoroughly I can dominate the game and beautify the gameworld" kind of experience, and I set about ruthlessly reloading games in order to accomplish various goals -- primarily building all the Wonders, as I described above. I find this kind of thing very fun, when I'm in this mood. It's one thing not to appreciate that brand of fun, that's fine, but it's another thing to deny that it exists or imply that there's something wrong with it.

Anyway. There are plenty of other threads on this topic.

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

The only universal & objective goal of the game is to have fun

TESTIFY!! and preach on!! This quote addresses 19 out of every 20 posts that I have a disagreement with.

Regarding "reloading = cheating," I also agree with Lochlannon on both counts: 1.) people should play whatever way they want as long as they satisfy the game's only criteria (having fun while playing) and 2.) saying that people are cheating when they reload comes off as quite condescending and holier-than-thou; the reception of this point is similar to that of, "since the AI lacks the critical thinking abilities of a human, it needs significant bonuses and therefore anyone playing below deity level is cheating." I usually reload primarily to fix misclicks but acknowledge its an opportunity to correct mistakes and I have done so. If you're going to call this cheating, than you need to go throughout your house and throw out all pencils that you own, pens only from now on, because any time you erase something and re-write, YOU"RE A CHEATER! For that matter, you need to remove the backspace and delete keys from all your keyboards. Absurd? only as absurd as "reloading = cheating."

Regarding the OP, the AI will perform the exact same functions upon a reload provided you perform the exact same actions for it to respond to. Consequently, wonder build times, as well as other actions, such as war declarations, will occur on the exact same turns, provided you retrace your steps precisely. From what I've seen, this seems to happen to an extreme degree; I'd be interested in seeing the results of an experiment that I lack the patience or eidetic memory to carry out: play the game through, noting every move that you make, from turn 1 to victory, then reload the game at turn 0 and follow the script. From what I've seen of short-term re-loads (10 turns or so), I wouldn't be surprised if running the same game "in syndication" would yield identical results (wonder completion dates, DoW dates, era-entry dates, even running into one specific mohawk warrior on one specific tile on one specific turn with one specific health level...