Unfair AI behaviour..

[andycapp]

My pet gripe about the AI (in Civ2) is the way it over compensates to make the AI Civs competitive. Most Civ2 players will have noticed the way some of the weaker AI civs seem to get a real boost on the power graph (and in the game) after you knock out the most powerful AI Civ. This is (I presume) the AI's way of maintaining competitive Civs to make the game a continuing challenge for the human player. I don't mind the AI continuing to provide me with a challenge, however when this is carried too far the game becomes a farce.

I find this to be particularly so when building the spaceship, it really pisses me off when I am technologicaly miles ahead of the AI Civs and all of a sudden AI Civs frantically start swapping techs and as if by magic their cities suddenly have all the improvements that come from the new techs. And then they start producing parts for the spaceship as though they were buying each part, at presumably huge cost, but there is no impact on the amount of gold they have. With an unsophisticated AI, cheats are necessary to make the game competitive for the human player but sometimes it becomes a bad joke.

 

[Vrylakas]

My wife a week or so ago was shocked when I pounded on my desk in frustration during a Civ game; I was completely overwhelming an AI Civ - Stealth Bombers attacking pre-industrial cities defended by Phalanxes and Pikemen - when they stole conscription from me and suddenly their border cities were stacked with conscripts. And I was the one with Leonardo's Workshop!

Fact of life: The AI cheats. It creates units magically as soon as it discovers a technology. Its units are not bound by the same rules of movement as yours. (For instance, it can move in squares adjacent to foreign units.) Its triremes will never be lost at sea. By destroying one civilization (and thereby spawning another somewhere else of the same color), the new civ will start out technologically from scratch but will rapidly catch up to you in a fraction of the time. Civs with 3 cities will successfully compete with you financially, and be able to finance huge amounts of rushed production for spaceship parts for endles turns. Often when I'm trashing a civ, barbarians will suddenly show up at my most vulnerable spots; the AI doesn't just control other civs... When you expel one of the AI's spies, it is not sent back to the capital but to the nearest city.

It's life...

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"...über den Bergen sind auch Leute..."