I’ve been fiddling with some mods from Civfanatics. I am on the fence with AI+, as I can’t really see much difference. I always use the one that limits religious dudes from crossing your borders, and there’s a nice one with a better report screen. I also installed a more detailed map mod, which seems to make, well, nicer maps. But there’s little I’ve seen that can change the fundamental weaknesses in the game.
I upped the difficulty to King (I was playing on Prince) and found it no different, really. I am not a fan of giving the AI tons of production advantages in lieu of brains so I haven’t really explored the higher difficulties. I can live with the combat ineptitude; the game is really about the challenges of building and fielding your army within the challenges of 1UPT and whatnot, not so much a wargame. But the diplo is killin’ me. If I had to pick one thing it might be the insane begging. Every other turn the other civs beg for handouts. It’s as if the game is written so that there should be a diplomatic advantage to giving the other civs stuff to get on their good side, but there just isn’t any reason to do so. Quite the contrary; they’ll denounce you anyhow because you have more wonders, you’re weak, you have more great people, Mars is aligned with Jupiter, whatever.
I think the main thing is there seems to be zero connection between what you do and how the other players act. There’s no loop to close. You can literally do anything and it won’t have any impact on how the other civs behave.
Yes, except of course for fighting a war. So it’s 3200 BC and you haven’t had time to do anything yet except a little exploration, and Catherine attacks you for not having any spies and Tokimune attacks you for not building an encampment. And because it takes such a long time to actually fight a war back then eventually everyone else denounces you for being a warmonger. There’s a definite cause and effect there, it’s just an idiotic one :)
Yeah it’s very rare to actually be able to take out a civ before classic rolls around. Maybe if you get lucky and city states intercept all the barb camps.
Sometimes I feel like avoiding warmonger penalties is like not jaywalking at 2 AM. Like, why am I really following these rules? Vicky’s still going to backstab me later.
But really, the wars don’t have much of an impact either, other than to waste time you need to develop at the early stages. Rarely can the AI civs actually prosecute the war well, and once you get denounced once you are pretty much perma-denounced forever.
But there’s all this empty line that needs to be settled!!! Settling new lands is the best defense because of anti-barbarian fog busting!
Alternative could be to fortify a warrior on a hilltop, it scares away scouts and is 0 maintenance. They can get shot at forever by horse archers and not take damage. Have to experiment. It’s just annoying to chase barbarians. Easier if you have horsemen, because just send 1-2 everytime the camps respawn. Warriors are so slow.
I’m starting to think King is actually easier than Prince in some ways because the resulting cities you steal are larger.
I think this is correct. Also, the AI is a tad more aggressive, which given their ineptitude, just means more opportunities for you to take their stuff.
I love taking their unguarded settlers, especially.
I guess there must be AI code for “Am I losing a war? Better crank settlers!”
Also I have repeatedly been subject to settler assaults where they run right up to my city with a naked settler despite there being a garrison unit. Come on. Also scout assaults where they suicide on the walls. This last game Greece and China declared war on me, and over two thousand years later (since I was deliberately ignoring them) I still hadn’t seen a single one of their units. Pathetic.
So I fired up some Civ IV because that’s a thing I do from time to time, regardless of what else is going on. Playing on Noble, because I am hilariously incompetent at this game these days.
Got myself a largely unmolested Egyptian start. Didn’t make it to all the city sites I had scoped out - barbarians settled one (later conquered by Portugal) and Portugal grabbed another. Ah well, I have five pretty rockin’ cities, no worries.
Built up a decent lead in tech and infrastructure - I’m maybe a tech or two ahead of Portugal, but as usual my army is too damn weak and I screwed up a couple tech things (forgetting that I super need Currency, for example) so I’m not running away with things.
Come the middle ages (1200 AD or so) Portugal and Charlemagne (my eastern and western neighbors) finally declare a joint war on me. I had a huge treasury from selling tech to the weaker civs and a nice fat 1400GP Great Merchant, so I was able to upgrade my forces immediately to counter.
And yet, they each moved respectable stacks into my territory and pillaged some villages and mines (goddammit) before I was able to repel their raiders. And Portugal is still besieging Alexandria with an entirely credible force that I need to get more troops out to deal with before he finishes reducing its walls and actually conquers the dumb thing.
Course, my economy is absurd and my infrastructure unparalleled. I’m going to take care of some goddamned business here in a few turns, I’m telling you. Still, these are two very credible threats. It’s nice.
I am beset upon both flanks, my center is retreating. Situation excellent, we are attacking.
Is it too easy to get a culture victory? I’ve only played a couple of games on Prince and in each case, I’ve won a cultural victory while I was concentrating on a different victory condition.
In the first game as Peter the Russian, I started out with a crappy isolated location, but once I got the tech to sail fearlessly across the vast oceans, I worked my way towards a domination victory. I was one capital short of the victory when I was surprised by a cultural victory.
In the second game as Tomyris the Scythian, I parlayed my bonus units into cities with some early wars of conquest, but settled down to attempt a scientific victory. France actually got the jump on me but I declared war on them to pillage their spaceport. That was enough delay for me to get ahead. I had just landed a man on the moon when I won a cultural victory.
This is going to sound like I’m trying to be snarky but I’m not, but it’s kind of hard for me to determine what victories are too hard/easy when the strategic/diplo AI being in the place it’s in. Is cultural victory too easy, or is the AI just that bad at competing for it?
It may be that the AI is bad at competing for a cultural victory. But I was thinking more along the lines of the mechanics of the game. I don’y fully understand how tourism works, but having lots of Wonders and cultural attractions generate a lot of international tourism which is what I understand leads to a cultural victory. When going after the domination victory, I didn’t just grab each capital, I conquered and kept some some other cities that were in my path towards the capital. That means I wound up with a whole bunch of Wonders and cultural buildings from conquered cities which I assume now add to the tourism totals for my empire.
So does this conquering activity generate so much additional tourism that I ended up with a cultural victory before I could reach the last capital for a domination victory?
The whole idea of a cultural victory is ridiculous to begin with, but this iteration’s implementation of it is much less successful than Civ V’s. At least in Civ V you had some impression of how well you were doing and how far off from victory you might be. In VI it’s just a mystery.
Culture victory can just happen, especially if you’re at war with someone.
My first game I was struggling to get over the hump. Then I attacked my neighbor. Turns out he was the only reason I hadn’t won a cultural victory. The second I took over his capitol I won.
I honestly, don’t know if a military victory is really possible without doing precision strikes on capitol’s since conquering tends to decimate someone else’s tourism and give it all to you.
The culture victory this is so baffling I turned it off weeks ago and never turned it back on in any future games. There isn’t nearly enough feedback and accidentally winning the game feels really unrewarding.
