Why is the AI always so strong with Suryavarman???

[Zeiter]

It seems like Suryavarman pops up in almost every one of my games, and almost every time he ends up being one of my most formidable opponents.

I find it somewhat inexplicable. Objectively speaking, Sury's civ doesn't seem particularly advantaged vs. other civs:
A. UU sucks.
B. UB is okay
C. Traits (expansive/creative) have okay/pretty good synergy in getting him lots of sprawling, powerful cities.

That last part seems to be why the AI always does well with Sury. But I wouldn't classify AI Sury as a "builder" (Ghandi), or "wonder-spammer" (Louis XIV), or "tech-whore" (Mansa Musa). He does pretty well at all three, but he lacks the fatal achilles heel of all the quintessential builders, wonder-spammers, and tech-whores: military weakness.

Maybe this is why the AI seems to play well with Sury. With him, the AI programming seems to have struck a balance. At the same time, Sury will have powerful cities that are rivaling my own, but I can't just barge in and take them without a fight. He builds a military, and he uses it intelligently (attacking when there's an opportunity, but mostly staying back...unlike, on the other end of the spectrum, the pscyho-warmongers who soon get behind in tech or who bite off too big of a piece for them to chew, like Monty or Shaka).

Has anyone else noticed this about Sury? I know that whenever I meet him in one of my games, the thought goes through my head, "Oh boy...this is gonna be a challenge." And then sure enough, when I acquire a map of his territory, I find that he has like 20 size-15 cities or something, and a decent military to boot. He actually a faction I'd rather have close by rather than far away. If he's close by, I can reign him in early (or spread my religion to him, make us best buddies, etc.). If he spawns far away (or god forbid if he gets a huge landmass all to himself), by the time I meet him mid-game he's just a monster.

Has anyone found any sort of situation to which AI Sury doesn't respond well?

Perhaps the programmers of Civ4 should take a close look at how they programmed Sury (as far as unitbuild probabilities and such) and see if maybe they've struck a competence balance with the type of programming they did for him.

Edit: Back in the ol' SMAC days, we used to joke about Chairman Yang being like the "blue virus that just seems to take over the map." Well, I think Sury is Civ4's blue virus.

 

[KingLoraxII]

Its weird - it seems alot of people have this problem with a different CIV from time to time.....For me Sury is NEVER a problem. He is a clueless idiot, a joke - I have never had a problem taking him over or just ignoring him and let others pick on him. Never once a feared foe.

Now, for me its Zara. If he is away from me he builds huge and seems to be a force. Others have laughed at the assertion that the AI has a found a leader that works in Zara.

So I dont know why this happens to some and not others - maybe a part of that whole rng thing. My guess its too small a sample to make any real judgments of anything other than chance.

 

[Zeiter]

Yeah, I guess the AI is pretty strong with Zara as well. Another well-balanced leader.

Maybe the tricky thing about these balanced leaders is that there's no clear-cut way to deal with them. It's very game-dependent each time, and you have to be creative and adaptive about it, and really put your thinking cap on. It's not like when you meet Mansa Musa right next door, and the obvious response is "Vassalize that whiny pushover," or when you meet Monty next door and think, "Take him out early or try to sick him on others and watch him fall hopelessly behind in tech."

 

[eastsidebagel]

Never had problems with Sury so far. Zara on the contrary can sometimes be a real military-spamming, agressive badass. He destroyed me several times in my first games of Civ.

 

[Justin Somnios]

How funny. In my last game he was a pushover I always had to revive (because he was an ally close to my enemies). I kept making him go to war against Monty and he never captured anything. In a game before that, he was dominant, and I always had to kiss his feet so that he wouldn't take over my cities (busy in another continent). Everybody has that civ who seems to be superior than the others.

If he's a juggernaut and other AI can't stop him, it's up to you to weaken him.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Well Surya in my game seems like he's growing into a beast (can't really tell how big he is... only got to his territory with a scout once), he's neck and neck with me in techs and we have a similar sized army. But the person I believe has this problem is Zara, in all my games he's either military maniac/beastl builder thats tried to destroy me several times or the military maniac/beastly builder that's my best friend and goes around destroy other civs for me.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Its weird - it seems alot of people have this problem with a different CIV from time to time.....

It's been mentioned before. Some leaders are the same to each of us, but some of us have leaders who behave differently to us than they treat others. For example, Cathy has never backstabbed me and is always friendly if I play on my own machine. If I play on my room mate's machine, she's unpredictable. I don't know why. I've also noticed some small differences between some leaders between my desktop PC and my laptop. Judging by what others have said in threads, some people have different experiences with leaders than I do. It might be perceptual differences on our parts, who knows?

But before you panic, take solace. Monty is always Monty.

 

[Continental Op]

Has anyone found any sort of situation to which AI Sury doesn't respond well?

Well, in my games Sury has always been the universal underdog. Maybe he has just had many lucky breaks in a row in your games?

 

[Alrin Kharr]

As it so happens, Survy was my closest neighbor in my most recent game (Darius, Prince). He was north of me, with Brennus above him and Catherine to his northeast. The three of them sort of boxed each other in, leaving him little land to expand like crazy the way he normally does, while I REXed peacefully and took most of the south. All of them were relatively limited in land and resources; but because the four of us shared a religion, none of them ever attacked each other, or me. By the end of the game, all three had peacefully offered to become my vassals, Survy being the first.

 

[jollycynic]

the problem I have with zara is that (for me at least) he is militarily unpredictable. Ive had that summ. .. .. .. .. . attack me while friendly, then once the war was settled almost immediately turn around and start being best tech-trading buddies all over again. Most other leaders I can at least hazard a guess if they will be provoking me or not, but with him I just can never tell.

 

[jollycynic]

It's been mentioned before. Some leaders are the same to each of us, but some of us have leaders who behave differently to us than they treat others. For example, Cathy has never backstabbed me and is always friendly if I play on my own machine. If I play on my room mate's machine, she's unpredictable. I don't know why. I've also noticed some small differences between some leaders between my desktop PC and my laptop. Judging by what others have said in threads, some people have different experiences with leaders than I do. It might be perceptual differences on our parts, who knows?

But before you panic, take solace. Monty is always Monty.

do you select that option to re-seed the RNG on each start? Mayhap that makes a difference with personality reactions?
And yes, monty is and always will be, monty my faithful attack dog.

 

[J-man]

Creative AI's seem to do pretty wel, generally speaking. Don't kow how that is.

 

[CossackProblem]

Surveyor Man does pretty well in my games too. Zara creates gigantic empires in every game I've played with him, but he's never really aggressive military wise.

 

[Cynovolans]

Sury is hardly ever in a game when I play. When he does he is always just somewhere in the middle of the score list and is just really unimportant. Zara though always seems to create cities faster than I can, and that always causes me to declare war and take a city or two.

 

[BakingTheArt]

Edit: Mistake Post.

 

[Kadazzle]

Zara always does well in my games, most recently he had 3 vassals before gunpowder. But, with the help of little Monty and his great Master Kadazzle, I was able to take Zara out.

 

[CHEESE!]

The AI has found a calling in Zara.

He/She/It also does very nicely in Pacal.

 

[Turquoiside]

For me, Peter is starting to me a nuisansce. In my first Prince win, I had to just hold my breath in the hope he wouldn't declare war on me. Luckily, I was able to keep him busy on Kublai and Monty until I safely escape to Alpha Centuari(sp?).
Just yerterday, he boxed me in and took over all the land that fits perfectly in my empire. He controlled the biggest empire and begna to leave me in the dust. When I tried to invade, his huge milirary crushed my awesome Samurai with little effort. Thise thing are powerful, I crushed an entire stack of Gilgamesh's forces with them in two turns! A beast, more so to me then Survaryarmen is.

 

[bestbrian]

Zara and Sury both manage to be somewhat more effective than the average AI, and with the potential to become actual menaces to the spreading of my munificent rule. But, like all the AIs, they don't prioritize Gunpowder-Steel, and thus are they swayed from their delusions and persuaded to share in the fruits of Brianism.

 

[DioAurion]

I'm currently playing my first game of better bts ai mod and am facing off with surv... if you think he is normally bad, he is a nightmare military tactician in this mod. I think after 150 turns (epic speed) of off and on warfare i've managed to take 2 of his cities and sacrificed many good units doing it.

In response to your saying that his unique unit sucks, I would have been able to easily crush him in this scenario if not for the ballistic elephants that completely flatten my otherwise impenetrable forest defense with knight advantage pushing into cities. I'm so frustrated with the special elephants i'm currently sending spies just to destroy his sole source of ivory to get a few turns of freedom from him building them.