How is the AI overall???

[kuroth]

I assume good but have not heard a lot of talk about it on here

[kuroth]

wow.. Guess that means it sucks...

[dearmad]

yeah... sucks... (back to my game)

[yin26]

Let's put it this way: If you plan to coast, you're toast. I have found that if you don't develop a good standing army, it's pretty hard to avoid somebody attacking you in force, at which point it's hard to recover. I'll be more nuanced with this after more experience losing.

[Feldii]

From my first game on Noble difficulty (no advantages for the AI or me).

The good:

* The Arab AI attacked me while I was building my spaceship and about to win. He took 3 of my 8 cities before I managed to build enough units to hold him back.

* Due to my war with the Arabs the Ghandi AI almost built a spaceship before me. It had one component left when I launched.

* I was sneak attacked twice in the game. One time by the Arabs (discussed above) and the other time by the Aztecs, who landed three units right after declaring war (he was on a seperate continent).

* The AI uses every type of unit to some effect---fighters, bombers, helicopters, artillery, mounted units/tanks, melee units, and archery/gunpowder units.

The bad:

* Once again, the AI does not concentrate its forces effectively. I think I had the weakest army of anyone all game, and yet I managed to win every war I fought in. I don't think I was vastly better at controlling my units, but I was vastly better at having my units in the right place at the right time.

* The AI doesn't always use the right units for the right job. When I attack an AI city, I bring lots of artillery and take out a city's defense before I attack. The AI will bring a few artillery, and use them moderately effectively, but it needs a lot more.

* I will be way better next game; the AI will not be.

The ugly:

* No AI ever managed to take any other AI's city.

[Silencer]

Somebody tell mi this

I got:

1 Archer
1 Pikeman
1 Swordsman (2 upgrades)

AI attacks me with horse archer and the swordsman was defending.. Why? Shouldn't the Pikeman do it against mounted?

Or another sittuation

AI stacks:

2 Knights (at the top)
2 Crossbowman
1 Catapult

I attack:

When Attacking with pikeman - crossbowman engages
When Attacking with maceman - knight engages

Shouldn't it be pikeman vs knight and maceman vs crosbowman?

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Silencer
I attack:

When Attacking with pikeman - crossbowman engages
When Attacking with maceman - knight engages

Shouldn't it be pikeman vs knight and maceman vs crosbowman?

AFAIK it takes the best defender, not the defender your unit has the best chances against (to make it more diffecult to win a battle)

Originally posted by yin26
I have found that if you don't develop a good standing army, it's pretty hard to avoid somebody attacking you in force, at which point it's hard to recover

It is possible to win a game without war. I just won a cultural victory, but my army was close to non-existant, but still nobody attacked me, but this was just because I shared the same religion as all the others (well, except for those Indians, who had Budism)... They got wiped out late in the game

[Willem]

Originally posted by Feldii

When I attack an AI city, I bring lots of artillery and take out a city's defense before I attack. The AI will bring a few artillery, and use them moderately effectively, but it needs a lot more.

At least it's using those types of units, that alone is an improvement.

[Sartaq]

Originally posted by Feldii
From my first game on Noble difficulty (no advantages for the AI or me).
The ugly:

* No AI ever managed to take any other AI's city.

That depends on the game. In my first Noble game there was plenty of AI city taking. I would say atleast 10-15 cities were taken by AI and one faction was nearly destroyed by AI alone.

[dconner]

Has anybody noticed the AI nations being "too peaceful?" In my first two games (playing a peaceful building strategy myself), I saw about four wars total:

- 2 apparent "phony wars" where war was declared but nothing really happened, beyond perhaps a naval engagement or three, before peace

- One invasion of my home island with two galleons. Almost well-timed, actually. I had neglected my home defenses, and still had a bunch of warriors, spearmen, and the like. Which, by happenstance but unfortunately for the AI Arabs, I mostly upgraded to state-of-the-art Riflemen while the ships were in transit.

- One AI vs. AI modern era land war, very brief, but surprisingly resulting in the apparently weaker Spain conquering and razing one of China's best cities, but most forces on each side sitting around in their cities.

I suspect I just had atypical experiences, in part due to playing rather sea-powerish maps, since I haven't seen many other complaints along these lines. In my current game, I'm on a big continent with 3 rivals, so there seems to be a lot more potential for warmongering, though partly it'll be me as the instigator.

[yin26]

I think Solver's advice to do a large land map really does make all the difference. As he puts it, that's enough AIs to force enemy and friendly camps, etc..

[Solver]

Well, on Large maps the AI is probably indeed going to be more aggressive, and there's larger potential for blocs forming. One immediate consideration is that on large maps there are more than 7 civs, thus, everyone can't get a religion of their own.

Much of the AI peacefulness in Civ4 actually makes sense, you'll have to get used to that. In Civ3, the AI would declare war on those it hatese determined by a dice roll - in other words, it would do so sooner or later, and it was pretty random. In Civ4, the AI considers other factors and makes the decision to go to war based on those, not on a random dice roll.

[ChaotikVisions]

Well, I just lost to the Mali(space race win) a few turns after I had built the Apollo Program wonder to begin building mine own spaceship. This was my first game on Noble, I managed to hold second in power, but the Mali just passed everyone by, and not even as a big empire. So I was impressed there, though it is my first game so I probably made some mistakes.

As for agresssion, it really seems religion is key in this. I hardly ever saw civs with the same religion waging war on each other, but sparked off my first war with a refusal to adopt Confucism from the Germans. They trashed my poorly defended barbarian city and then came in and rampaged through my improvements while I built an army to destroy their Horse Archers and retake the city.

After that I kept up a decent army, though that didn't stop them from starting another war in the medieval era. Took some casualties but fought them off and to a standstill. The AI was actually smart, I had just got Knights up and going and was building a force to take them, then they come offering peace and gifts. During this time I also got into a war with the Aztecs(on a small continent by themselves, they landed about 8 units total that I killed) and a war or two with the Spanish(who I never saw, think it was just politics).

After that I stayed out of wars for awhile, but on the main continent (Mail/Rome/Spain/Egypt) wars raged on for awhile, mainly between Spain and Egypt. They didn't really make any headway until the late game and had reduced the Egyptians to just 2-3 cities when the Mali won. Whats interesting is the Mali only went to war once that I know of, and thats when I bribed them to fight the Aztecs for me at the end.

Wanted to see if I could slow down their spaceship construction and keep the Aztecs off me since I started a third English-German war and was happily pillaging Germany. Didn't work though, or at least it didn't delay them long. All in all I liked the AI, but religion seems to play a large role in wether they go to war or not because of its effect on relations.

[lethe]

I'm frankly not impressed. But one of the early patches has to improve AI use of artillery. That alone would make it alot better. Combined arms warfare seems to be more a happy coincidence than AI cunning.

It's alot like it's three predecessors. The AI hasn't moved all that much forward since the original actually. Still doesn't understand strategic warfare, has hilarious problems with transoceanic wars, basically never performs a two-pronged attack, rarely feints.

It expands, wars and dies with the subtlety of a train wreck. It just piles on and hope you break first.

In short, it's about on par with a 1965 chess bot.

The above isn't as harsh as it sounds. The only two games I can think of with any real strategic depth that AIs play well that I can think of are Chess and Backgammon. Civ 4 is more like Poker or Go, two games which computers play like 8-year olds.

Civ 4 is both an incomplete information game as well as having a very, very, rapidly exploding decision tree. Computers won't play these type of games well anytime in the foreseeable future.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by lethe
Civ 4 is both an incomplete information game as well as having a very, very, rapidly exploding decision tree. Computers won't play these type of games well anytime in the foreseeable future.

And when they do, look out!