Is it just me? The comp-controlled aggressive opp can't play

[Freddz]

I feel the game is great and well designed in most ways but one thing bugs me a lot:
The computer controlled aggressive opponent can't play the game at all.

Always the SMALLEST nations. How the fock can the conquerer civs always end up smallest, well, at least towards the end. And they are always far behind in the scoring, at best 3rd or 4th. That makes a bit of sense of course, since they don't build as much, but I would like to see them able to expand more in that case. Or see the aggressive trait better balanced.
First, am I the only one experiencing this game after game?
I miss the conquerer civs that you had to really fear! Since they are so bad in the normal game, they don't put a lot of pressure on you. I miss those civs from the previous games that constantly made demands.

Anyone else miss that pressure put on by the aggressive civs from previous games?
Anyway, if I am right and aggressive civs does worse in most ways, I feel there are a few problems that may be the cause of this:

1. The A.I. conquering plan is not well designed in regards to when and how to build and expand. This tolls a lot on economy if done wrong and perhaps the aggressive civ doesn't have a good overview of this.

(Fix: Cheat a little more financially for the aggressive ones or, preferably, make the plan for conquering better!)


2. The A.I. conquering opponent is too much dependant on religion when making whom-to-attack decisions.

(Fix: Make religion count less as a bonus toward diplomacy when dealing with conquering civs, unless it is a religious conquering civ.)


3. They don't make enough demands.

(Fix: Make more demands. Fix the two above and number 3 here will improve. A demand refused to a conquerer civ could result in a -2 penalty on diplomacy instead of -1. That could be fun and exciting.)


4. The aggressive trait isn't good enough. Also, many of the favored civic choices of the aggressive civs aren't as good as the other choices in the end game. Perhaps a tech in the end game could give a small boost to hereditary rule for example. (Or give a better base protection against spying in an expansion where spying is more interesting). The fix for this one can be done in numerous ways.


I would be interested in knowing if players feel that the aggressive trait is well balanced (on higher difficulty levels) from a players perspective as well?

[Diadem]

Not enough demands? Are you serious? Sometimes they seem to make demands every 5 turns. If that's not enough then I don't know what is.

Perhaps they should respond more hostile towards an demand that is turned down.

But the entire system is unsatisfactory imho. The AI treats you entirely differently as it treats other AIs. That's bad design imho. It's a quick way of making the game more difficult, but it's also dirty.

If the AI blackmails me, ok, fine, but then I want it to blackmail other AIs as well. And if other AIs cave in to blackmail from others, then I want them to cave in from demands from me as well. Same with tech trading, they always demand ridiculous lobsided deals, but when I demand such a deal they always refuse. The logical result is that AIs will never trade amongst eachother, each party wanting a deal that is unacceptable for the other. However, the AI does trade among eachother, all the time.

Ideally, I want the AI to see no difference at all between me and other AIs.

This would make the game easier of course. So then either the AI has to become smarter, or has to get more bonusses.

Aggresive AIs should, imho, be a lot more opportunistic, striking whoever is weak. Right now they are often completely suicidal in wars. Loosing 4 wars in a row against me and then declaring a 5th. It's okay if they hold grudges against someone who attacked them. But it's not me starting those wars.

[Diadem]

The aggressive trait in itself is not unbalanced. A free combat I promotion is pretty nice to have. But you have to use it well for it to work well.

[Handel]

The problem with the aggressive AI is the defence is too strong in Civ4. But the AI is the usual - they don't send powerfull stacks with many siege weapons; usualy they send small groups from 3-4 units wich are easily defeated group by group. And even if the AI sends powerfull stacks, they include at best 1 catapult or cannon wit hit, so if you just so-so prepared, you have no problem to beat it with this prevailing defence.
And then here homes the stupid idea of the developpers foir the pillaging. They even put it in the hints area and the AI strictly follows this path... Pillaging gives tons of money... Bull****. Pillaging gives at least 50 times least money then the costs of the lost units. The other stupid devellopers idea is with pillaging you can hinder the enemy civ. Bull****. With pilaging you can cause just a minor nuisance. Because your pitifull pillaging units can't survive more then 1-2 turns. But if you send a real army, which can survive longer, sending it to pillage instead of city capturing is the most stupid thing you can do. And AI often do exactly this. It is quite obvious the bright head which invented the hint "pillage to earn a lot of money" did't really played the game.

[Freddz]

Originally posted by Diadem
Not enough demands? Are you serious? Sometimes they seem to make demands every 5 turns. If that's not enough then I don't know what is.

They never ever make that many demands from me, but perhaps they are usually too much influenced by

A) my religion if I have spread one
B) the fact that I am a lot more powerful than them. (Not neccessarily more powerful than some builder civs though)
C) a civic I have chosen because they favor it. Then one can build up comfortably without worrying about them at all, Then switch back to a better civic choice (than the under-balanced hereditary rule) when you are on track and have built up the powerful buildings you needed peace to build and then start on military defence again.

As it is, demands aren't at all scary and doesn't make for tight decisions. At least we can agree on that. Perhaps demands should result in a -2 penalty on diplomacy on all relations when turned down.

[Freddz]

Originally posted by Handel
The problem with the aggressive AI is the defence is too strong in Civ4. But the AI is the usual - they don't send powerfull stacks with many siege weapons; usualy they send small groups from 3-4 units wich are easily defeated group by group. And even if the AI sends powerfull stacks, they include at best 1 catapult or cannon wit hit, so if you just so-so prepared, you have no problem to beat it with this prevailing defence.

Yes, I intended to write about this in my initial post but in the heat of writing, it slipped my mind. Defence is way too easy.
I'm usually very dissappointed in how the A.I. launches its attacks. From what beta-testers(solver in particular) told, the A.I. was supposed to be very good at launching attacks and competent in showing you why a killer stack doesn't work. It simply wasn't true. Whether it was a promotional lie made on purpose or something obvious that solver had missed, or some half lie since it is possible that the event may happen now and then if one play enough games and never learn to war competently, or a mix or something else I don't know. But it wasn't true.

I have seen 2-3 catapults in a smallish stack a few times, though it is pretty rare that it is a well organized and well used stack. Defence is very easy when one see what is in the stacks and the human is much, much better at taking advantage of this information with the current programming.

[Handel]

Originally posted by Freddz


From what beta-testers(solver in particular) told, the A.I. was supposed to be very good at launching attacks and competent in showing you why a killer stack doesn't work. It simply wasn't true. Whether it was a promotional lie made on purpose or something obvious that solver had missed, or some half lie since it is possible that the event may happen now and then if one play enough games and never learn to war competently, or a mix or something else I don't know. But it wasn't true.

Beta-testers are very carefull not to piss off the devs. They want to proceed to be beta-testers, you know

[Azuarc]

Aggressive civs aren't aggressive. They're unit-builders. As a result, some of them aren't very expansionistic or imperialistic, and that's really shooting them in the foot. (My last game I conquered Monty when he declared war on me - sucker - and he had 3 cities. Everyone else had 5 or 6, but he moved too slowly in the land grab.)

[Freddz]

Originally posted by Handel
Beta-testers are very carefull not to piss of the devs. They want to proceed to be beta-testers, you know

One can avoid pissing on them without making missteps like this.

Anyway, I'm not sure yet that the aggressive trait is well balanced. It will be interesting to follow MP game statistic to see which civs are the favorite ones on the different map sizes. I think aggressive trait does better on really small maps.

[Freddz]

Originally posted by Azuarc
Aggressive civs aren't aggressive. They're unit-builders. As a result, some of them aren't very expansionistic or imperialistic, and that's really shooting them in the foot. (My last game I conquered Monty when he declared war on me - sucker - and he had 3 cities. Everyone else had 5 or 6, but he moved too slowly in the land grab.)

Yes. I feel my number 1, 2 and 3 points up there in my starting post sums up what could be done to make the aggressive ones more aggressive.
Civilization fun for me has always been a lot about pressure, and it is sad to see such major historical influences as Genghis Khan and Alec the Great always make themselves look like A.I. fools and non-threats in game after game compared to Catherine the Great and other builder opps.

[Shaka II]

Along these same lines, has anyone played the aggressive AI option yet? I'm thinking of doing it next game for several reasons. One reason is that the AI is a bit too complacent and friendly toward one another. That's fine for the builder, but it seems too much of a love fest for me.

In my present game, which seems typical (7 Civs, normal size, pangea, epic, emperor), two Civs have been eliminated (Napoleon, who Bismarch and Washington eliminated, and Peter who I eliminated), while the remaining Civs are pleased or friendly to one another. I'm faced with the prospect of pissing off the whole bunch as I gear up for war. I've disabled space and diplomatic victory, so it's going to be a win by domination, time, or culture, and Washington has a fairly impressive culture score that I'll have to keep an eye on.

I have a ways to go before my army is large enough to make war now, but at least Mansa Musa will attack Bismarck, and I have a vast amount of gold. So, that will kick the end game off.

But the aggressive AI option seems like it might solve this problem, in addition to keeping the tech race from being so much of a trading game. The way I look at it, the AI is great at building and advancing (trading), but not as good at fighting, as humans (yet), so it should be at a disadvantage from a tech perspective and a battle perspective. But also it's more fun if a lot of the war happens before the end game, where it usually consists of building an army of well over 100 units, which is fun too, but it's best if a few more Civs have been eliminated by then.

A typical situation is where you're fighting it out with a Civ in ancient, medieval, renaissance era, and falling behind in tech, while the other Civs just sit around and build/advance. Aggressive AI would seem to be the answer. Does that make sense?

[Handel]

Originally posted by Shaka II
Along these same lines, has anyone played the aggressive AI option yet? I'm thinking of doing it next game for several reasons.

I play with aggressive option. The results... In my last game Bismark explored the wilderness with a single archer. Suddenly decided to start a war. Lost the archer and after few turns agreed to peace. After 20-30 turns my other neighbour Lous XIV suddenly declared a war. Attacked with 1 archer and 10 chariots against axemen, horse archers and spearmen. Pillaged two farms before losing everything and giving away all his money (290 golds) for 10 turns peace.
So with "aggressive" option the AI just becomes erratic and more stupid. I guess there is a randomness check every turn "Should I declare a war to somebody?"

[xxFlukexx]

Aggressive AIs fall behind because they usually hate everyone and attack a lot so they either fall behind techwise or attack someone with lots of friends and get worked. Although if an aggresive AI has a successful war or two, watch out they are pretty unstoppable.

I think the Aggressive trait is one of the best, faster barracks and free combat I is huge. You get access to the 25% promotions right away and if you use your units correctly, that's a huge advantage.

I see lots of AIs attacking and conquering other nations, maybe it depends on the settings you are using. The AI really doesn't bring enough siege weaponry when attacking, but other than that the conquering AI is alright, lightyears ahead of Civ3 and other TBS games.

[Footie Mad]

I think you are right to a point, but it's still the best Civ AI there's ever been. Though I think sometimes it might depend on the map people are using, I've gotten the impression that the most popular option is to play on larger maps with several continents. Giving each civ more time to build up, well you see where i'm going with this...

On pangea maps the aggressive civs aren't quite so disadvantaged and if it's a small or very tightly inhabited you must fight viciously for every piece of land. There's where I've seen the agressive warmongerers excel. With one exception, the guy who never gets along with anyone, Tokugawa.

[pauli]

the pillaging thing is really frustrating.

"oh no. the ai has set his units to pillage my territory rather than attack cities. whatever will i do. i couldn't possibly withstand this vicious nibbling long enough to take all his cities. no, sir. i'm doomed to rapid financial ruin. woe is me."

it's just... pathetic.