Suicide?

[Fenrisulven]

Argh! Is it totally impossible to not end up in a world war in Civilization II? The last couple of times I played I've tried to be calm and peaceful, give people what they want and form alliances and so on. I think I never ever really won a game by sending away a spaceship. Those stupid people always attack me, without any reason. Like the two last times I've played. I haven't threatened anybody. I've be extremely peaceful, didn't even build any military except of one unit in every city to defend. Just expanding out in the wilderness and building roads and stuff. Then suddenly, without a single reason, some stupid fool declare war on you when you last expect it. You are unprepared and the fool manage to take a few cities. I mean what to do? Just sit back and watch? Not a chance, even if I try to be peaceful. What do I do? I retake my cities and we make peace. You think the idiot has learned and give him a second chance. A few years later he and his ally suddenly break the peace and attack. Once again, you are unprepared and lose on or two cities. Argh! It always end up like this. And I always give up at this point, my furious anger takes over. "If they mess whit the best they die like the rest." And then I begin producing military unit in all my cities and sooner or later they all are dead and I'm left with a poor, but strong and powerful fundamentalist state filled with unhappy citizens. No democracy, no peace, no happy citizens, no wonderful free country, no big cities filled with improvements, no spaceship. ARRRGH!!!!!!! And I think I never ever, besides in one or two scenarios maybe, have fought a real war with modern technology and powerful weapons. Instead I think I have destroyed thousand and thousand civilisations with Dragoons and Cavalries. And the game I'm playing now. I tried to do the same as the 10 last times I've played. I built a scenario where everybody begun on different islands, I thought this would keep us apart and maybe prevent war. However I manage to miscount the number of islands so I happened to begin on the same island as the Celts. They wanted war immediately and besides, it was my island, so they died like 3500 B.C. or something. How sad… Anyway. I kept building and researching, didn't even send any boats away from my island to explore. Tried to isolate myself in hope of not getting attacked. The time went and everything went pretty nice. Then the Egypt made contact. They hadn't got contact with anyone else. They were kind and offered me a alliance. Of course I agreed. Then the Japanese or some stupid people found me. They declared war and the rest of the world did the same, they all were allied whit one or another. Except the Egypt then. They took some of my cities and built new ones on MY island! Once again, I got furious. I was bigger then them all. Why the hell did they attack!?! A few turns later, at 1700 A.C. something, they all were dead and I had something like 150 cavalries. But still the egypts liked me. I was really surprised. They wanted to talk to me and of course I greeted them. Then said that they didn't want to be allied anymore. And the next turn they made a sneak attack. I mean, what the ****ing hell? I was 30 times bigger and more powerful then them, still I gave them all knowledge they wanted. They hadn't knew the guys I killed, and we were allied. If I were them I would find my self extremely lucky. So why did they go from enthusiastic to enraged so suddenly? I haven't got a single clue… Anyway, I didn't eliminate them, because this time I really wanted to build up my country and cities and build a spaceship. Instead I just surrounded their island with boats. The years went and they kept attacking, signing peace treaty, breaking them and so on. Then, like 200 years later, when I just had built the apollo program they managed to sneak a transport ship whit a diplomat out from their island and stole rocketry from me. Nuclear missiles. And that I couldn't allow, so I took one of their cities over and established a spy headquater. From there something like a 20 spies destroyed their cities one by one. They had nothing built in any of their cities at last. And as fast as they begun building a nuclear missile in a city the spies were there sabotaging it. Then I did some stupid things which they used. From that on I decided to take one of their cities every time they broke a peace treaty. It ended up as always, their civilisation was destroyed and my spaceship were never built. I really love this game, it's the best ever made, but on the same time I really hate it. I mean, how the **** do they think? There they are, they have something like 5 riflemen and one canon and one city left. A city in riot and without any city improvements at all. Their enemy have at least 200 more cities and are a 1000 times more powerful. 50 cavalries, 10 battleships, 10 cruising missiles, a few bombers and armors plus more can attack them at anytime. And isn't that enough stands 20 big cities ready to produce one armor each every turn. Armors which can be airlifted right to the place they are needed. Or well, they could produce 20 nukes every turn if that would be necessary. But Lucky them, because it's peace. But what do they do? They do a sneak attack, as they have done a thousand times before. I mean… eh… Is that rather smart? It's like if Somalia would declare war on not only Europe, Russia and USA at the same time, but also the whole of Africa and Middle East. I mean… it's pretty obviously that they wont stand a chance. But still they attack. And well, maybe they think like this: "Better die worthy then living under control of this mighty empire." But why did they broke the alliance in the first place then?


Ooops… *look on what he have written* Think I got carried away there… sorry.

Anyway, if I ever play this game again, (I hope civilization III will be released soon. Alpha Centauri and that other game sucked by the way!) I will go into the text files in the game directory and find the behaviour of all computers. Then I will change it to "beeing really really nice". Hopefully that will help…

And P.S. If you could be kind and excuse my bad English I would be glad.

 

[shadowdale]

Hi there - if you look through some of the older threads in this forum you will find several discussion on more or less the same subject - and they all end up with:

1. The AI is stupid!!

2. The AI has been programmed to attack a Civ when it reaches a certain level of power - often they all unite to do this.

3.It IS possible to complete/win a game without any warfare at all - but it's the exception rather than the rule!!

So there isn't all that much you can do about it - you might want to try bigger maps and less Civs, then the chance of meeting the AI get considerably less, and hench the chance of war - or you can just learn to live with it and kill them of one by one, before they get to big!!

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We are species 8472 - assimilations attempts are futile - the weak shall perish

No wait we are species 5618 and we got beer...... don't harm us!!!!!!

 

[Heffalump]

The military challenge is an important aspect of the game, and important in history as well. Not many civilzations survived from classical to modern times without having to slog through a number of wars. So surviving
in peace SHOULD be tough.

But I agree, the AI needs to be smarter in picking and waging its wars. At present war with the AI is just a nuisance that drags on and on unless you ramp up to end it. Civ II programmers perhaps tried to make up for the AI's lack of tactical skill by increasing the frequency of warfare. To do this they increased the aggressiveness of AI civs.

Hopefully in Civ III war efforts by the AI will be less frequent but more of a meaningful threat. Hopefully!

 

[Warlord56]

usually if war is declared on me they have at least two seperate colonies(I usually play island maps when I feel like waging war). I take over one of the colonies, adn tehn we come to peace.

 

[greenie]

War is inevitable... but how the game proceeds later in the game can depend on youur very first contact.

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- Greenie

" Let us take by
cunning what we would
take by force"

 

[Kefka]

All I can say is that you have got to STOP bending over backwards to please those retards because it will never work. the best thing you can do is kill them all BUT leave one city and never destroy that city, just all there Improvments and any units they send out!

then you will be free to build your spaceship.

This is you------->

<-------This is them!

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<IMG SRC="http://www.grworld.com/vanillacubesgames/files/kefka.gif" border=0>"Why Create things when you know they must be destroyed!"
"I will Create A monument to nothingness!"

 

[Magnus]

If you want a peaceful game, just go to your RULES.TXT file and make every AI civ 'rational civilized perfectionist' and you can enjoy your wonderful, happy, stress-free (and BORING!) game of civ2...

 

[Fenrisulven]

Well… I've already changed the behaviour of all stupid people. So they now behave more civilised. And of course, I didn't mean that the enemies should never attack. How hard would it be then? But it's just this thing that I'm usually twice as big and powerful when I first make contact with other civilisations. And still they want war… and get slaughtered. (And yes, I always play on deity. But it's easy.) I really hope that the AI in Civilization III will behave more reasonable. It's so boring always being a big militaristic fundamentalist state. And as I said. I doubt I ever fought a real war with modern units. I always win with my cavaliers and dragoons. And it's boring! Anyway… I trying to get the mp/hotseat utility from the download site to work. But it don't work. "Missing dll files." Do anyone have those dll -files? I would really want to be able to play a hotseat game...

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

If you want to get to a modern war against formidable opponents, I guess one option would be to not retaliate when you are attacked. When they take a couple cities, let them keep some or all of them, but build up a defensive border guard.

Face it, you're not going to get much peace while you grow to become a superpower. They WILL ally against you and be a complete nuisance. But if you want them around for the Battle Royale later in the game, you just have to show considerable restraint, hike up your skirt, and let them survive and prosper until you are ready for the Big War.


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DEATH awaits you all...with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

 

[Fenrisulven]

Well, maybe. But I will never be able to put up with it. I always get so furious when they sneak attack me over and over again while they know that I can crush them all at the same time like little worms... I think I just have to except, as people have said, that the AI in Civ II are stupid...

 

[Bud2998]

How many units do you have in your cities? You should have two at least per city, three for the big ones, like the capital city. Like two musketeers for the cities and the big ones two musketeers and a dragoon or cannon. Plus, do you have city walls in your cities? Build them first thing. Baracks would also help. That's usually enough to keep the AI from taking the advantage. Plus, about your islands, build your first cities on the coast of it and later ones on the inside. It helps me a lot, yet I only play at the King level, so it may not help you. Well, all in all, I hope this helps a little.

 

[Joeb WK]

You said about a fundamentalist state full of unhappy people i didnt think this was possible i thought people under a fundamentalist government couldnt be unhappy.

 

[ElephantU]

A Fundy state IS full of unhappy people (just look at Iran...), but Fundy suppresses them. The issue is that you cannot just switch to a Democracy right after an exhausting war without doing considerable work to pacify the people. Fundy allows you to neglect the happiness issues temporarily, but your science and growth both slow down.

Sounds like the original player was using MGE. Using the Classic version has less AI hostility.

 

[ferenginar]

War is inevitable, the AI is so stupid.

I have had 80+ cities 200+ modern units, a pet civ, 1 city, 2 units, and they attack.

 

[Baka]

I usually stay peaceful in the game until I'm attacked, and don't give in to any demands other civs have. And if a civ attacks me, I'll retaliate, until their entire civilization is destroyed. I don't care how often they beg me to stop, they attacked me first & they will pay for it. This unforgiving attitude usually scares off other civlizations from daring to upset me for a good long while

 

[SVAndrei]

Sure, a peaceful world is what we all dream of, but come on! Part of the game's fun is waging war. Playing against the AI can be somewhat boring, not to say annoying, but whitout war, the game gets kinda boring, doesn't it?

 

[Jawn Henry]

Once, only once, i had a really awsome game (the rest are just good). I played as US. English were allies from about the time i got iron working all the way to the end - and they didn't whine for techs or money! They had a pretty big empire, as did i, so they weren't in need, i guess. I played on a huge map, so there was plenty of room for both of us, and a little more. We did trade tech here and there, and - surprise surprise - they didn't up and give it to my worst enemy - or anyone else for that matter. They were dependable in war and peace. Heck, it was almost like having a human ally that doesn't whant to stab you in the back at the end. I held my end of the deal, and they held theirs. Awsome. I forget just what difficulty setting it was - i think it was in the middle (prince). I had most of the wonders, but i let them have a few (the ones that don't interest me, like the crusades).

JH

 

[Gelion]

If you want peace - prepare for war. I never had problems at early stages at least with AI attacking me if I had many military units. I try to conquer/colonize only one huge continent and make as many military as nesessary to protect it and stay there unitll I have all the techs. Anyone disembarking is eliminated anyone who turned back is safe. Sooner or later the AIs fights each other and I have a total wr with the winner, the war I've been preparing for the last 6000 years .

 

[scloopy]

A strong defense if necessary regardless of what type of game you wish to play. It took me a while to learn that I really need to prepare for a war. I have played entire games while at a defensive war the whole time growing and then bilding a space ship and winning. One thing I have learned is if they are after you get the UN first but DO NOT hold an election. You will loose. Just like reality, we support the blooming thing and almost everyone there hates our guts. II is a better game because you have to think more. Stick with us. It really is fun, but also most frustrating.

 

[DSN]

What I find annoying is when all the ai are inter allied, so if one declares war on you and you retaliate, they all declare war.