Daftpanzer
canonically ambiguous
Firstly, I’m very happy to see this project progressing. Secondly, I’m very sad that I don’t have version 3.17. I’m on dial-up and I just can’t get download a patch that big, so I can’t try this out 
I recently got Civ4 complete, which comes with BTS version 3.13. There is still one killer issue for me I’d like to fix somehow – that the AI’s don’t fight each other 99% of the time, while they happily gang up on you if you're not already dominating the world. Its really a game-breaker for me.
Even in Civ3, I remember fighting epic wars to protect my allies overseas, and actual world wars involving alliances which were not player-vs-all. Civs would wipe out other civs, and then alliances would be made against the big powers, so their empires would sometimes rise and fall in the same game. So basically no matter how many hours I invest in Civ4, it just doesn’t match my best games of Civ3, despite all the many other great improvements to the game. All because of this AI behavior.
I appreciate that most people are happy with the AI the way it is, and play only to be the biggest and best, and give up if they aren’t winning. But I’ve never played like that. I only want to play if you could come 2nd or 10th and still feel like you had a fun and interesting game.
Example: In my latest game of BTS, on the 'marathon' time setting, I fought about 10 wars from the ancient to early reneissance ages, against my two neighbours on our isolated little part of the world. I was happy just to be ‘mediocre’, playing to survive and role-play more than anything. I was even compiling screenshots, thinking of making an AAR style thing.
And then… the Byzantine Empire suddenly sailed to the other side of the world to invade my early renaissance nation with Cuirassers, Grenadiers and War Elephants, landing about 50! units in a couple of waves. I’m guessing that must have been the majority of his total military, and most of his fleet to transport it. The Byzantines used their ships to bombard my coastal cities, and proceeded inland with mixed armies including a whole load of artillery. Some of them split up, but one large army stayed concentrated and began to wipe out my last centres of resistance one by one.
On one hand, I was very impressed. I’d never seen such an invasion from an AI before, in any game, ever. It came from overseas and actually conquered my whole nation – truly a first experience for me. And I think I was only playing on ‘Noble’ level or the one above. I understand someone from this project worked on the AI for BTS, and it includes all the work you did for Warlords. My earlier wars were hard-fought as well, I could really see a difference in the AI’s handling of units and choosing when and where to fight, and I had to think hard about my own tactics and unit upgrades etc…
But on the other hand, I hated the fact that my game ended this way after all the hours put into it. Was I threatening to win the game? Nowhere close, the big players were way ahead. So was I the weakest target? Not that either, I was slowly climbing up the score ladder, and I even had my own vassal! Was I the least advanced? Not quite. Did I have major resources the AI wanted? A few luxuries, perhaps.
It just seemed ridiculous. The Byzantines could have chosen a weaker target closer to home. They could have waged a war for control of their own continent and become a true super-power. But no, they travel around the world to attack me and gain a load of inefficiently-run overseas territory just because I’m not an AI. And of course, most of the AI’s had open borders with each other, and none of them were going to take advantage of the Byzantine weakness at home after sending most of their army overseas. And I think there was only one war in the whole game between AI’s where cities actually changed hands, and that started when neither were in contact with me…
Suddenly I’m out of that immersive world and back to a rather stale, historically-themed wargame against an alliance of AI factions.
----
ANYWAY, I basically just wanted to rant, but I do have some limited programming experience (made my own little games in C++/OpenGL) so I’m also naively hoping there is something relatively quick+easy that I could to on my own, in order to get the AI’s see each other as threats and targets, and/or stop treating the human player as anything special…
Or maybe there are some of your older mod versions for 3.13 lying around somewhere, that I could try?
Thanks for reading this, and for any help/replies
I recently got Civ4 complete, which comes with BTS version 3.13. There is still one killer issue for me I’d like to fix somehow – that the AI’s don’t fight each other 99% of the time, while they happily gang up on you if you're not already dominating the world. Its really a game-breaker for me.
Even in Civ3, I remember fighting epic wars to protect my allies overseas, and actual world wars involving alliances which were not player-vs-all. Civs would wipe out other civs, and then alliances would be made against the big powers, so their empires would sometimes rise and fall in the same game. So basically no matter how many hours I invest in Civ4, it just doesn’t match my best games of Civ3, despite all the many other great improvements to the game. All because of this AI behavior.
I appreciate that most people are happy with the AI the way it is, and play only to be the biggest and best, and give up if they aren’t winning. But I’ve never played like that. I only want to play if you could come 2nd or 10th and still feel like you had a fun and interesting game.
Example: In my latest game of BTS, on the 'marathon' time setting, I fought about 10 wars from the ancient to early reneissance ages, against my two neighbours on our isolated little part of the world. I was happy just to be ‘mediocre’, playing to survive and role-play more than anything. I was even compiling screenshots, thinking of making an AAR style thing.
And then… the Byzantine Empire suddenly sailed to the other side of the world to invade my early renaissance nation with Cuirassers, Grenadiers and War Elephants, landing about 50! units in a couple of waves. I’m guessing that must have been the majority of his total military, and most of his fleet to transport it. The Byzantines used their ships to bombard my coastal cities, and proceeded inland with mixed armies including a whole load of artillery. Some of them split up, but one large army stayed concentrated and began to wipe out my last centres of resistance one by one.
On one hand, I was very impressed. I’d never seen such an invasion from an AI before, in any game, ever. It came from overseas and actually conquered my whole nation – truly a first experience for me. And I think I was only playing on ‘Noble’ level or the one above. I understand someone from this project worked on the AI for BTS, and it includes all the work you did for Warlords. My earlier wars were hard-fought as well, I could really see a difference in the AI’s handling of units and choosing when and where to fight, and I had to think hard about my own tactics and unit upgrades etc…
But on the other hand, I hated the fact that my game ended this way after all the hours put into it. Was I threatening to win the game? Nowhere close, the big players were way ahead. So was I the weakest target? Not that either, I was slowly climbing up the score ladder, and I even had my own vassal! Was I the least advanced? Not quite. Did I have major resources the AI wanted? A few luxuries, perhaps.
It just seemed ridiculous. The Byzantines could have chosen a weaker target closer to home. They could have waged a war for control of their own continent and become a true super-power. But no, they travel around the world to attack me and gain a load of inefficiently-run overseas territory just because I’m not an AI. And of course, most of the AI’s had open borders with each other, and none of them were going to take advantage of the Byzantine weakness at home after sending most of their army overseas. And I think there was only one war in the whole game between AI’s where cities actually changed hands, and that started when neither were in contact with me…
Suddenly I’m out of that immersive world and back to a rather stale, historically-themed wargame against an alliance of AI factions.
----
ANYWAY, I basically just wanted to rant, but I do have some limited programming experience (made my own little games in C++/OpenGL) so I’m also naively hoping there is something relatively quick+easy that I could to on my own, in order to get the AI’s see each other as threats and targets, and/or stop treating the human player as anything special…
Or maybe there are some of your older mod versions for 3.13 lying around somewhere, that I could try?
Thanks for reading this, and for any help/replies
I actually lied about playing right to the end... I did that today, and the Zulus ended up sending huge armies too, not just the Byzantines 50+ units. And another oveseas invader (Mali) took out my vassal seperately at the same time... If I didn't feel so unfairly victimised, I'd be singing the praises of the AI!
