3541

Yea, seems to me that AI does need to scout you. On the other hand, it’s obviously the AI doesn’t suffer for a lack of gold… I mean I’ve seen an AI player with a balance of around -1800 gold with massive armies, and I think I’ve seen him forming research pacts as well, but I could be mistaken on the last part. That’s the kind of thing that motivated me to ask here… I trust the Qt3 boards more than the 2K forums, and I thought maybe it had been discussed or confirmed somewhere in the past 118 pages :)

3542

Usually I see research pacts happening between AIs that have the gold for it. I spend a lot of time in the diplomacy screens because I sell stuff to the AIs all the time in my games, and I don’t ever recall seeing research pacts happening between broke AIs. In fact, I’ve noticed that if I constantly sell them resources for their gold they form less research pacts because, I assume, they can’t afford them.

3543

In my Bismark game I found that if I had too many units and their upkeep is costing me too much I just gifted them to city states. They don’t give much influence but if you’re fighting on different fronts its useful to prop them up a little.

But what it allowed me to do is not produce a lot of units, so I could use my cities for building production.

3544

I had that happen too, though it was with England instead. They were my last Civ I needed to destroy for a domination warfare victory but it wouldn’t allow me to attack. Very annoying.

3545

In my current game (Emperor/Archipelago/Standard) I just played around getting various islands and didn’t have a game plan. I realized that I probably couldn’t make any of the win conditions and the game would go to score victory. So I decided to try to cut Montezuma down to size as he was the only one with a higher score than me.

I had somewhat superior tech (Mech Inf/Modern armor/Rocket artillery vs Infantry/Artillery) and a superior navy to back them up. The war was slow, but steady going as my smallish elite army waded through seeminly endless amounts of infantry. I managed to free Copenhagen and slowly advanced towards his capital. Several times Montezuma gave me peace offers, but I wanted to reduce his score, so I didn’t accept any. Then he suddenly offered me everything he got for peace, and I do mean everything. 14 cities, loads of gold, loads of strategic resources and every luxury resource I didn’t already own. I accepted and when the dust settled he was left with only his capital…

Ironically he had a decent amount of troops still left around in what was now my territory. Even some Rocket artillery. But I almost felt like he fooled me, as a bug crept up and prompted me to select production in all my newly acquired PUPPETED cities. Ofcourse I couldn’t and the only workaround was to annex the cities giving me -99 happiness (actually it was closer to -200 if you checked the tooltip, but happiness seem to cap at -99). It’s very late in Europe, so will have to figure out what I’ll do tomorrow.

Summary: Civ V needs some patching!

3546

Now THAT is some AI!!! Using bugs to win ?!?

3547

I could swear I’ve seen two factions get a research pact the turn after neither had the gold to enter into one with me…

So I have 1 turn to build The Great Library, and I click next turn and get a message someone else built it. So why does the tie go to the AI??

Am I missing a way to turn off the Governor? Because I try to up production by ordering tiles to be worked but next turn they are not being worked again because Gov has switched them back. BTW, an icon rather than a empty hole would be better for showing hexes you’ve chosen to work.

3548

If you left click the circle will get a little lock in it and wont change.

If you right click then it assigns it normally and the gov can change it on the fly.

(I might have those backwards, but you get the idea)

3549

It’s not actually a tie. In fact, any tie would go to you, the player, as your turn always goes first.
The AI finished that wonder in the same turn you were 1 turn away from finishing it.

Turn 100, player phase -> Your wonder will finish next turn.
Turn 100, AI phase -> AI finishes the wonder.
Turn 101, player phase -> You are informed that wonder has been built by the AI.

I finally finished my Japan game yesterday, and by now …
I have to admit, I’m kinda surprised (not REALLY) how much slack people are cutting this game.
While Civ5 is no doubt addicting and for the most part elegant, many parts of the game are either non existant or basically broken.
There’s little diplomacy to speak of, the AI has neither strategic nor tactical AI and does stupid things it can only survive in the first place because it’s basically operating under different rules.
The AI cannot use navy and cannot properly wage wars under the new combat rules.
Many game systems are opaque (like unit upkeep), others are easy to “game” and scream “not throught through” (gold conversion).

I really like some of the things they did here, but, for example, why did everybody jump on Creative Assembly when their AI was unable to do naval invasions, and when in Civ5, the same thing is the case, everybody basically ignores it and continues the praise?

I’ll no doubt be playing this for quite some time, but it’s in need of some SERIOUS patching, and some stuff can and will probably only be fixed in expansions.

rezaf

3550

CA’s issue was a lot more noticable, since the maps you played on kinda depended on the AI being able to load troops into boats and sail to other places - and it did not.

But I agree, there’s a ton of issues with the game, that pops up the more you play. But I’ve gotten used to shelving games for 3-6 months before playing them these days, if they involve anything but shooting/melting peoples faces

3551

I had the exact same bug recently, although in my case it did not end up costing me the victory (but only by virtue of me having communism and other unhappiness reducing policies). I think going forward I will not accept peace treaties with city gifts unless I intend to annex or raze them right away, at least until a patch fixes this.

3552

Is there yet a mod that tweaks the amount of destruction happening when you take enemy cities?

One big part of the happiness issues springs from the fact that when you take a city, most everything that was in it is gone.
You have to rebuild everything from scratch, starting with monuments again.
That inevitabely takes quite a while, and thus it takes a while to compensate the unhappiness caused by the new population.
I’d like to see something along the lines of pillaged improvements, where it takes a while, but most everything can be brought back up.

rezaf

3553

Since the AI plays by different rules it’s unclear whether it actually builds anything but wonders and units. If it doesn’t that would explain why no buildings other than wonders remain – there weren’t any in the first place! I noticed that AI city defense is often so low as if it doesn’t bother to build walls even in front line cities, for example.

3554

If everything is getting wiped out that’s a bug (or the manual is out of date). Per page 76 of the manual:

The city’s culture and military buildings (temples, barracks, etc.) are always destroyed when the city is taken. All other buildings have a 66% chance of being captured intact.

IMO wiping out culture and military buildings makes sense. Why would a monument to the previous owner’s cultural greatness cause anything but trouble for me? But in theory most of the rest of the stuff should still be there.

3555

Hmm, you’re right… but does that actually happen? Admittedly I don’t really know since I always puppet first, and puppet states build lots of junk on their own.

3556

I’ve never captured a city (in only three full games, though) which had a intact colosseum.
Even cultural/military buildings should have a decent chance to survive.
Temples and barracks have often been repurposed by invaders historically.

The theory that the AI never actually builds that stuff could be true, though I haven’t seen any evidence for that except in captured cities, there was nothing. For example, I captured France when we were both well into the industrial age, and none of their cities had a factory. Or a library. Or a marketplace.
If it’s true, it’s … really sad.

rezaf

3557

hmm - the more I think about that, the more true I think it is. I’ve taken tons of cities where when I entered the list over buildable buildings to make a courthouse, I can pretty much select everything since the city is completely void of any kind of buildings, but the most basic ones.

I’ve sad this before, but I have a suspicion that this is one of the reasons espionage isnt in the game, since if the AI cities/units don’t operate by the same rules, it wouldnt make sense to be able to see what they were doing in their cities.

3558

I’ve invaded with buildings intact - but cultural and military buildings are a large percentage of the overall number.

I’d hope that the reason espionage isn’t in Civ5 is that it was the one addition to IV that everybody turned off, the minute that became possible, because it was broken.

3559

I hated espionage in Civ4. That was the one major change with BtS that I strongly disliked. It’s just something I didn’t want to deal with. I was already pretty happy with what Civ4 had and it added a dimension of play that I did not enjoy.

3560

I think I’ve seen the AI with buildings but I wouldn’t swear to it. Clearly early on the only thing you are likely to see is libraries and maybe a happiness building. However since the AI seldom has a problem with happiness. At least when the do the happiest people survey, I suspect the AI doesn’t have a lot of reason to build happiness buildings… I’ll have to start annexing some cities in the industrial era and see what remains.