5881

heh… in my current game, I have open borders with the Romans and the French, who are at war with each other. The Romans sent a settler and an escort military unit across my territory to settle somewhere I didn’t want them to, so I surrounded them on five sides with random units (Great Generals, horsemen, etc.) and since the AI apparently thinks every unit has to move every turn, I was able to “escort” them right out of my territory and into the middle of France to get destroyed.

I think I will go back to Civ 4 until I see a little more about the AI in the expansion.

5882

Brilliant!

5883

In my latest game at emperor level, in a feat of stunning bravado, the American AI – insane warmongers, at least they got that part right – attacked my city with a naked general. Well, I assume he was naked; I didn’t zoom in close enough to the unit to say for sure :)

Really, it just moved this general on his own up next to my garrisoned city, when it could have either stacked with real units or just retreated, or better yet, done nothing at all. Meanwhile the stupid AI, totally outclassed in every way, losing its own units left and right, unable to defeat a single one of my units, with no hope at all of taking any of my cities, keeps demanding an insane price for peace, namely all my luxuries and gold plus tribute. Really, I do want peace, there’s no fun in dicking around destroying dozens of stupid pikemen with my crossbowmen (the AI just loooves defensive units, especially on the attack) for turn after tedious turn, but no, not at that price :)

Later on, some other AI nation whose units and land I can’t even see yet declares war on me with no provocation whatsoever, by himself with no allies. In 10 turns or so, with no fighting whatsoever, for the same total lack of any good reason, it offers me that same insane peace treaty but in the other direction – it gives up all its luxuries and gold, despite the fact it apparently can’t even path to me, and I don’t even know where it is on the map.

…since the AI apparently thinks every unit has to move every turn…

Yeah, what is up with that? It’s not entirely true, but it’s almost true. In the unlikely event an enemy unit is in fact occupying a key hex – sometimes it does happen, randomly – all you have to do is wait a turn, and you’re almost guaranteed it will give up its position, often to make an inexplicably idiotic move. The one case you can be sure the AI will never move is when it’s got a land unit being fired on by a barbarian trireme. That scout or axeman or whatever will sit on that coastline hex the rest of its life, healing 1-2 points, taking 1-2 points of damage, and slooowly leveling up…

5884

Oh, I remember that. The city states loved to have 2 or 3 units doing a 3 point patrol around their little territory. God how I hated it.

5885

I found this via a post on BGG. Giant Multiplayer Robot (just entered open beta last week) is an application that allows you to play MP Civ V in hotseat fashion. Based on the video demo, it handles player passwords and hosts the save game files, so there’s no need to manually manipulate save game files. It looks pretty slick!

Also, there’s a Steam group for it.

Is there interest on Qt3 to try this?

5886

Sounds interesting… If only they could make a multiplayer application that would make warfare workable with multiple players. Hotseat could work, naturally, but it would mean waiting between turns - which is the worst thing possible in a LAN environment.

5887

This interview does a good job of giving more details about what’s in the upcoming expansion. The one thing I didn’t hear that I wanted to was that the AI got alot of love…we’ll see I guess. However, I am still very exctied for this one.

5888

Looks like they slipped in some more AI handicap bonuses. Just played a game at Emperor in which someone built the Great Library in 2500 BC, which at this level is pretty much physically impossible for a human player, even Egypt with a capital in an ideal position. Usually I could be sure it wouldn’t be built until 1500 BC, but this happened two games in a row. Then I was attacked in 2000 BC by someone at a mere 170 power who threw 20 units at me to my 5, not that the numbers did the AI much good. My income seemed to be lower than usual, too, though I didn’t analyze it. But tossing random surplus luxuries at distant civs for 190 or 7x30 gold kept me solvent until currency gave me a positive income again.

If anything, the AI seems to have gotten worse, though you wouldn’t think it possible. Naked generals charging my units. Knights attacking fortified pikemen in the hills. Constant enemy sea transport directly in front of my cities and ranged units where they can be easily slaughtered. One of my cities was almost surrounded at one point, but it wasn’t attacked at all. Not one visible siege unit was built by the AI up to 1400 AD (when I finally quit, because even without most of the usual Wonders I have built by then, my 4 Great Scientists still gave me riflemen and cannons vs. archers and pikemen, with artillery not far in the future, so there wasn’t much point in playing on.)

5889

FYI - they haven’t had a patch since December, so this is just the same old Civ V you’re playing.

5890

2500 is pushing it, but entirely doable on Emperor. Don’t need to be the Egyptians either, though you’ll want Marble and Tradition. Try it as Babylon, where you have extra incentive to rush for it; as I recall you have time to build a Worker, Monument, and Scout first? Maybe even a Settler, though I’m not certain about that. Can’t remember if I chopped trees for it either, but I suspect I did.

Of course it’ll cost you more in exponential Growth than the Great Library will benefit you! Generally I like to handicap myself by taking on extravagant projects though, to offset the AI’s military bungling.

5891

Any mods fix the AI in the meantime? Civ IV had some wonderfully AI mods.

5892

Sadly not that I’m aware of. :-(

The best fix that I know of is simply to build enough military AI opponents aren’t likely to attack, not start any wars yourself, and end those they start as quickly as possible (giving back any cities they gift you).

Civ 4’s AI wasn’t quite so obviously clumsy militarily, but in the end it was moot as I had to cut it the same slack to get a good game.

5893

Spotted this thread and got back into the game again after about 20 hours when it first came out.

Loving it. That old “one more turn” feeling back with a vengeance.

Randomly assigned China and off I went with my usual strategy of Land Grab. 3 cities built and I noticed I was competing for the rest of the continent with Russia. So be it. Time to start training military units. A few turns later I notice the Aztecs have also declared war on Russia. All her border units vanish from view obviously realising the threat from the Aztecs on the other side. Perfect timing! In I go and ambush Moscow. My canons made quick work of her puny trebuchets.

Took her next city (despite her feeble attempts to broker peace). However, got to her final city and noticed a number of Aztec units crowding around. Same as before I sieged the city with my ranged units. The suddenly, an Aztec unit swans in takes the city from me! Arghh! A quick reload to an autosave and I surrounded the city before inflicting the final blow. I’ll chalk that reload down to beginner’s naivety on my part. Also I forgot how time-consuming entering war can be. I don’t put any focus into production in my cities and can quickly lose the upper hand on culture and research. I actually like that aspect, war should be a major distraction to a nation, right?

So after razing the cities (keeping them seems like too much a happiness penalty) I rushed in with a couple of settlers to grab the land before the pesky Aztecs could. So I’m sitting pretty now. The continent has about 7 of my cities and a couple of city states (who bug me tbh).

1850 now so time to concentrate on becoming the industrialized power house that China is. Enough war for me…

5894

There can never be enough war. I find war addictive. In my current game I took out the Persians. Then I noticed that England was quite small, so they got knocked down significantly to the point that I’ve left them one single city out on the tundra that I couldn’t be stuffed getting to. And then I thought that China would be worth doing some damage to, seeing as she kept on denouncing myself and my good Egyptian friends. Playing as the Aztecs gives me reason to keep on attacking, but I made the fatal flaw of holding too many cities. It is unbelievably hard right now managing 19 cities and the associated unhappiness. Still, if it means spawning rebels, then that means my military gets some free practice and I get some more culture.

Like you quarryman, I was giving Civ V another shot after giving up on it shortly after it released. It is still a bit disappointing.

In one instance, the Persians had a rare source of iron nearby. They built a farm over it. I guess they just weren’t interested in the fact that they could have slowed down their eventual decimation by building two swordsmen that it would have provided?

Diplomacy sucks. It is still a black box to me. I have no concept of why the AI acts and reacts the way it does. Civ IV’s breakdown of various plus and minus modifiers helped shed some light as to how things were progressing diplomacy-wise, with the added hidden modifiers to add some uncertainty into the mix. I’m still questioning what the point is in becoming friends with other civs when they are still happy enough to stick a knife in my back.

The AI is happy to essentially surrender too soon. Still too happy to throw away decent cities in order to bargain for peace.

The city management screen still gives me a headache. Everything feels like it is hidden away somewhere.

However, I do enjoy the military side of things, even if I am playing against an AI that seems more interested in wildly flailing about with what few units it might decide to build. Combat feels exciting because it isn’t relegated to one stack grinding away at another stack until one is the eventual winner.

5895

You can always give your cities away to your enemies if you don’t want to keep them…

5896

Couple of things:

  1. there’s a mod for peaceful city states so that they stop pestering you to go knock off another city state. This made them far more pleasurable to work with from my pov, if a little less “realistic”
  2. When you conquer, puppet. Very minor unhappiness hit, and you still get all the gold, science, and culture the city can offer except you have no control over what buildings it makes. A fair trade off, especially when you realize that puppeted cities don’t count against your amount to earn another policy or ramp up the happiness needed for a golden age.
5897

Oh, that is excellent. I’ll hit up CFC and have a look.

Regarding the puppeting vs annexation of cities. Where I got caught out was the fact that my happiness increased when I annexed and then purchased the courthouse. I’m sure over time I’ll be able to recover and bring my happiness up once more.

Overall, I should say that Civ V is more pleasurable than I recall from when it was first released. I never mentioned that. It does have me going back for one more turn that was sorely lacking initially.

5898

Man I wish the AI was moddable. Maybe we’ll get the option to do so after the expansion?

5899

They need to release the SDK for heavy modding.

5900

I never play with city states, they are just annoying and slow the game down. Its also harder without them :)