Winning the game: How competitive are the AI leaders?

[Iranon]

Maybe someone more knowledgeable in the ways of the underlying code can tell.

My experience with different leaders is very diverse: Hatshepsut always seems to put heavy emphasis on culture, even when I'm miles ahead of her.
Tokugawa usually seems to not even try at all, being too backwards to shoot for space and rarely bothering to focus his military on conquest before the opportunity slips from his grasp.
On the other hand, I made it my business to keep a close eye on Willem: He's come close to cultural victory, he's been launching spaceships, and he usually picks very fine moments to go to war against me.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

It all depends on their personality and difficulty. In my experience, Shaka is a complete beast when it comes to military. My Shaka policy is if I can't keep him at a friendly relations level (the only way to gaurentee he won't attack) than he needs to die. Monty is much the same way early on, but quickly fizzles out, Shaka can be a monster all game.
I agree with Willem, he's probably one of the most well rounded AIs in the game, he can do basically anything well. I always keep an eye on him, too.

 

[futurehermit]

Only some AIs are competitive (Mansa, Gandhi, Hannibal, etc.). Usually these guys are financial, but not always. The ones who aren't should be your pigeons. The ones that are are the ones you will need to either take out early or keep embroiled in war as much as possible til you can take them out. Shaka is the only military-minded leader who can actually threaten to win by domination if he gets going early. In this case it can be advantageous to actually keep him from warring as much as possible by bribing to peace. However, if he is at peace, he may start looking your way, which is why a strong military and bending-over-backwards diplomacy are important for dealing with him.

 

[madscientist]

Ragnar is one to watch out for as he is very agressive and techs well to keep up in military. He also beelines military such as HB, construction, rifling.

HC is a monster in several ways, he techs fast, build wonders, and can fight pretty well. He is probably the more unpredictable leader.

Catherine usually does well throughout the game.

Bismark seams to have upped his game in BTS. He is quite the wonder hog and much more agressive than warlords or Vanilla.

Zara can also be dangerous. One of the few times I lost a late game spacer ac was a diplo against him.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

One leader that I can never see winning in the hands of the AI is Toku. Refusing to play nice with others doesn't help anyone.

 

[futurehermit]

Pretty much all the aggressive leaders besides Shaka are not competitive. They can end your game early, but if you survive that through diplomacy or otherwise, there's not much they can do to win the game.

 

[Sjaramei]

Depends a lot of i you play Aggressive AI or not too, some of the warmonger AI's go berserk with aggressive AI on and can be quite a challenge. Mansa isn't as dangerous anymore, he gets declared on a lot so he slows much more down now. Capac is very dangerous early but it seems he slows down late game. (techwise)

Shaka, Ragnar, Hannibal, Sury (khmer), Zara and some others are capable of getting huge empires early and using them good, else they are just "ok"

Creative seems to have a lot of impact on AI's, anyone done some research on this?

 

[DMOC]

In my experience, competitive AI's are:

Louis XIV, Shaka, Justinian I, Zara Yaqob, and Pericles are really good. Louis XIV was going to get a cultural victory in my monarch game as Darius a while ago, but of course, he only had a few swordsmen in each of his cities. But Louis was still pretty good since five of his cities had over 10,000 culture by 1900 or something like that.

Shaka is just evil. He defeated the Koreans (who by the way, never do well in my games) completely in a game where I was Egypt (with Ram) but, fortunately, on a separate continent.

Leaders who are never competitive are Tokugawa, Wang Kon, and Genghis Khan.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I'd have to agree with DMOC's post. I think Pericles is the master cultural victory AI. He can't do as soon as Louis, but Louis' cities are weakly defended. Pericles' are fortresses.

 

[Light-Giver]

I love teaming up with monty in the industrial age, we go around declaring war on weaker civs and by the time we finish them all off 1 or the other usaly launches a space ship by then. Only when you turn that off do you get 2 super powers waring with eachother...

 

[MyOtherName]

Pretty much all the aggressive leaders besides Shaka are not competitive. They can end your game early, but if you survive that through diplomacy or otherwise, there's not much they can do to win the game.

Actually, isn't Montezuma one of the ones that has a tendency to snag an early religious victory?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

Actually, isn't Montezuma one of the ones that has a tendency to snag an early religious victory?

Monty winning a game? LIES!

 

[Iranon]

Hmm, interesting... my experiences are often very different.

Huayna Capac failed to impress me so far; he usually seemed to be decent at everything but no true threat victory-wise. That, and he often ended up waging wars he couldn't afford.

Hannibal has also been spectacularly unspectacular in my games... making me think 'oh, he's still around?' even when he was a direct neighbour. Maybe that just means he's rational though, neither picking fights he can't win nor building up juicy cities without defending them adequately.