World map

[martylessard]

Is the world map faulty in its AI?

I have played several games on it.
The first (one of my earliest) was a lot of fun as china.

Since then I played rome - china keeps declaring stupid wars on me- killing off my development as I fight off hoards of elephants

As Japan - I just settled the Philippines what do you know, ancient persia ignores everyone around it and send loads of immortals to the philippines and declares war. I deal with this...who is next? china? india? no, of course not, pre 1AD rome reclares war.

This is daft, it kills a game...comments?

[Hauptman]

Mayhaps if you built more units, you wouldnt be the easiest target.

The ai picks on the player in ANY game because the players tend to NOT make enough units.

[ScreamingCube]

Yeah, the AI does have a really weird tendency to ignore people closeby and head across the world to fight someone they've barely made direct contact with. It does kinda ruin the feel of the game when you find out that in 1000 BC, a nation on the other side of the world built some ridiculously huge army, and then had it walk across the entire earth, passing through several other civs, to reach you and attack for little apparenty reason.

[martylessard]

funny thing is I only get this on the earth map

[Hauptman]

I get it on every map. and its always montezuma that does it...


However, take a look at the particular game. are all his neighbors the same religion? that is a reason for them to not attack each other. Do you give in to demands? If they demand a tech, and you deny them, then they will march across the world to teach you a lesson. Are you defending your metropolis with a single warrior? Again, easy target. Did you just declare war on his friend 20 turns ago? Be sure who you pick on doesnt have powerful friends.

You notice it more on the earth map because well, everyone is on the same continent. plain and simple. Just like a pangea map, it will be full of strife and backstabbing through open borders. It will happen.

And dont think for a second that the ai's are only declaring war on you, they beat each other up plenty as well.

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by martylessard
funny thing is I only get this on the earth map

Are you sure? Have you played enough games on other kinds of maps to say that it only happens on Earth maps, and that it isn't simply by chance that it's happened in several (all?) of your Earth-map games so far? "Enough" here would be quite a high number, as any events involving any randomness often occur in streaks.

In my earlier games I know that I saw this kind of a thing also, and I didn't play Earth maps at all.

The key is, as mentioned above, that if you don't build up enough military strength early on, the AI's will look at you as a very tempting target. Even AI's that aren't next to you.

From the statistics pages, ALWAYS keep an eye on how your military strength compares to others, and don't allow yourself to be left too far behind the strongest nations.

That may mean that you won't get every single Wonder out there built, but it's a necessary trade-off. Prioritize which wonders you really want, and don't bother with the rest, unless you have a comfortably strong military already, and can spare the turns on the city building the wonder.

Also, early on, what I failed to do in my earlier games was use selective chopping of forests to speed up the building of grannaries, barracks, and early wonders. Of course don't chop all your forests.

I don't think that the AI being opportunistic is a bad thing. And different leaders show different levels of eagerness to attack you; if they see you weak, different nations will respond differently to the temptation... For example, if I see Montezuma as my border neighbour, then I aim to conquer his cities and take him out of the game ASAP, simply because Monty is a nutcase who'll attack you at some point (probably sooner than later), anyway.

[MikeH]

It's possible to keep him sweet. In my latest game I started off badly (less than ideal starting land and I lost a settler and its escort to some barbs - d'oh). I was in last place and very weak so I really had to sweet talk all my neighbours. When I saw Monty was one of them I was very worried. Managed to trade my way up the tech tree and keep everyone happy. I concentrated on military units and kept giving him little bribes. In the end Monty went after the Russians who were my other neighbours. Weakened them. Once I was back on track I took the Russians out and was back in the game and back on top again. Woo.