What Am I Doing Wrong?

[BenDover]

There has got to be a faster way to go about this. My sessions are a mix between players and AI, and they all last roughly 500+ turns, if players can survive for that long, with all victories turned on but time. This is what I gathered so far...

AI manipulation is a big deal. Competing against human players by trading our techs away to the AI to win their favor helps a lot, sometimes to go to war against the opposing player. This is, unless I happen to be dealing with an unpredictable AI. Even a "Pleased" status doesn't seem to matter. I had a defensive pact with Ramsees II. Isabella was pleased with me and him. She shared the same religion as me for a while, which is great as I had ownership of the holy city. She declares war on me on the next turn. (This was a single player match)
80% of the time, avoiding war is nigh impossible. Getting everyone to like you is an incredibly daunting task. I then learned about a possible early diplomatic victory with the Apostolic palace. Victory is at stake? No wonder I was having such a hard time.
The AI as a whole seems so unpredictable and unreliable, I stopped caring all together about building a strong enough relationship for alliances/defensive pacts that I started to stab everyone in the back. Constantly.

War is a big deal. If you stay on top of the AI without getting into too much conflict, you can outech everyone else and rise on top. The more players (human/AI) the less fair the plays seem to turn out. If I happen to start out in the tundra, there's no way I could possible beat my friend with 3 gold in 4kBC.
Avoiding conflict, manipulating trade, relationships, and preying on the weak seems to be the most effective way to stay on top.

My biggest gripe is getting out of conflict ASAP, and QUICKLY taking over cities. What specific techs and buildings should I strive for an why? For the most part it seems very simple, but each game has radically different results.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Most important point - multiplayer, and dealing with humans in general, is a VERY different problem than playing against the AI. Human players will punish mistakes in ways that the AI simply cannot.

War is a big deal. This is really a reflection of two different things -- historically, it HAS been a big deal in the rise and fall of civilizations; also, it's one of the areas where it is easiest for the human player to get an advantage over the computer. So get used to the idea

My biggest gripe is getting out of conflict ASAP, and QUICKLY taking over cities. What specific techs and buildings should I strive for an why? For the most part it seems very simple, but each game has radically different results.

Against the AI, you want speed -- 2-move mounted units, therefore Animal Husbandry + Wheel, Horseback Riding, Military Tradition + Rifling -- or you want siege, therefore Construction, Steel, Artillery. Steel, in particular, gives you a siege unit that is strong enough to hold its own against the defending units of its time.

If you don't already understand how collateral damage works, you need to take some time to learn about that -- it's a key tactical element in overcoming the rock/paper/scissors combat model.

 

[Nials]

80% of the time, avoiding war is nigh impossible. Getting everyone to like you is an incredibly daunting task.

You simply cannot get everyone to like you unless everybody shares a religion which usually doesn't happen. You should choose your foes and friends. Give in to demands made by allies and sometimes foes as well - that's a 10-turn peace treaty which can give you some breathing room and might make the AI decide on another target.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The heck? If you're fortunate enough to start near the AI, gogo stomp on it and get bigger than everybody else. Then they have to dogpile you effectively or you win.

 

[cseanny]

I'll add it's quite helpful to understand how different AI leaders behave. Here is an old link, and tbh, I'm not sure if it's still up to date, but it should be a good starting point! Scroll down to post #5 and check out the links.http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=426524

 

[Manco Capac]

AI manipulation is a big deal. Competing against human players by trading our techs away to the AI to win their favor helps a lot, sometimes to go to war against the opposing player. This is, unless I happen to be dealing with an unpredictable AI.

First of all, unless you are playing with "Random Personalities" on, AI are not that unpredictable. Experience and playing many games with an eagle eye for their peculiar actions will do a nice overall description how an AI will react or act. Certain aspects are random like tech choices, somewhat city settlements, war decisions, etc. But overall, the AI is not that random as some people think.

Of course, there is a way to make up experience in a very expedient manner and this is "Know your Enemy" article. It tallies up every little characteristics that distinguish one AI from the others.

Even a "Pleased" status doesn't seem to matter.

Untruth. If you skim the article I proposed to, you'll see PLEASED stance has a dramatic change on their behaviour. For some, it enables tech, map, bonuses tradings. But the most notable and game changing is being a complete protection from war roll. War roll is an RNG proceeded each turn on all players, AI or not. Several conditions disable war roll. For certain AI's, PLEASED stance disables war roll. Suleiman, Gandhi, Boudica are some instances.

She declares war on me on the next turn.

Izzy has a war roll, even small, on PLEASED stance iirc.

Getting everyone to like you is an incredibly daunting task.

Wrong attitude. The game was implemented in a way to create sparkles and avoid most of the time perfect harmony between AI's and the human player.

For instance:

• Three early religions that are spread randomly early game and that create gangs vs gangs
• Peaceweights settled since turn 0 some AI to detest other AI's for the rest of the game (unless they got a lucky same religion).
• Between the human player and AI, random demands, free gifts, war demands, stop tradings were set just to annoy the player and add an unpredictable touch to diplomacy given the human player is bright and manipulative.

What you need to do is take a religious side by taking account your neighbours' religion or the most spread religion to make the most easy friends.
Give in early game to demands. Swallow your pride and see the potential to rise peacefully while the AI is fighting each others like mal-nourished dogs.
Spot the hated one. Some AI configurations due to religion spread luck or a peaceweight tending to be more one-sided create few AI's to be the universally hated. Pick on them, ignore them or make other hating them even more. That's a way to keep them busy.
On several occasion, you can bribe more AI's to fight each other. Unless you want to keep a good relationship with that AI, that tends to slow down the AI by a long stretch.
Being a manipulative sociopath is a important diplo skill in Civ4.

The AI as a whole seems so unpredictable and unreliable, I stopped caring all together about building a strong enough relationship for alliances/defensive pacts that I started to stab everyone in the back. Constantly.

Not unreliable. Read the article, you'll see. Be careful being an ultimate backstabber. If you don't know what you are doing, this will catch up and go after you one day. At some point, when knowing the AI quite a stretch, being an ultimate backstabber is really feasible. I am an extreme backstabber for instance.

(human/AI)

That's the problem. Involving human players make the AI environment more difficult.
If one AI decides to attack you, one human player might decide to backstab you, making the peace process even more difficult.

At last, you won't learn at all with generalistic thread like that. Propose a game with AI's only and let the pros (e.g. Lymond, Gumbolt, Cseanny, etc.) to show you in details how to do it.

Seriously, those kind of threads like this one presently is not helping much.

 

[Manco Capac]

If you have a particular question about AI behaviours, you can ask me directly. I have enough deeply to understand many of their little actions.

 

[BenDover]

Thanks for all the advice. I will continually read bits of AI behavior over time to reach a greater understanding. I'm afraid, however, that this thread is focused on how to topple the AI as if I was playing alone.
But I'm not, and I rarely ever play alone. We constantly manipulate the AI to the best of our ability to inevitably go to war on each other. We compete via espionage and send spies to do dirty work every turn. We also play on islands/continents, so there's a good chance a player may be isolated from war and inevitably win by default. The end results catch me off guard so often, I know I can improve my strategy tenfold, but it just feels like the game is way to random at heart for competitive play. There are too many circumstantial things that can go wrong (or right) from the moment we load the map that the initial advantages alone (and eventually discovering key resources already in your cities down the road) give a few players the edge to win against the majority. Not to mention the frequency I lose 95%+ battles are infuriating.

EDIT- From my personal experience, it seems as if Isabella, Alexander, Montezuma, and the Khans are s and investing a relationship with them are a waste of time. I'll read into the specific personalities to test my accuracy. (Probably way off )

 

[Seraiel]

You simply don't know how to handle that group of "Warmongers" . They're almost always underdeveloped, so can be bribed by giving them Technologies easily. They build lots of units and are very resistant to giving up (in addition to being really unpleasent when against someone) , which you can abuse by making them your assassins, or better: Your work horses. Use them to weaken your enemies, and join their wars, once they have weakened them. Time your attacks so that you get the city, the AI just wasted their whole Stack on just to soften the defenses for you, you'll learn how "stealing cities" works if you practice this. Once your work-horse is old and tired, then it's time to give it peace (by backstabbing it ) .

Information on how to abuse AIs was something that was planned for that article, but wasn't finished. In case of Isabella i. e. , she's awesome, she's a religious fanatic, so share her religion, and make sure to run theocracy (her favourite civic) . She'll love you so much, that she'll hapily attack anyone for you. She'll even invest her hammers to spread her religion to your cities, giving you free bonuses, a religion you can become the head of, once she's old and ugly again .

Seriously, but the best strategy (for high-lvl-gaming) I can tell you, is: "Let AI do your work." , words of wisdom from the great master WastinTime . I'll give you another advice on top, "easily controllable the minds of the simpler ones are" (learned that one in my yoda-course) , or in the language of time-waste again: "You're human, AI's pathetic compared towards you!" .

Now do your homework young padawan, learn what you need to get rid of the ones that are against you... Feel your anger... Sry, wrong text, of course I ment "to see behind what is in front you must, listen to Tachywaxon you should, then understanding her curse you will. People she helps, but after lifetimes of study, her wisdom became so large, that forgot she did how to speak french and english, sometimes formulas and links are all she talks today. If you want to become as wise, find out what she means with "use that search function" you must young padawan... " .

Sera