More aggressive AI?

[Forwarn45]

I've found most of the AI players are a little passive when it comes to warmongering. I usually play on prince or monarch difficulty with a small or standard continents map. In most of my games, there are maybe a handful of wars started during the course of a full, normal speed game. More than 1/2 the time everyone is at peace. Anyway, I was wondering:

(1) What options for setting up the game create a little more action?

(2) What has been the experience of people with the "aggressive AI" option. I haven't used it yet and might try it - but I don't want the AI to just be agressively stupid?

[opaque]

1. Try more civs and a smaller map. That makes for intense land and resource competition which leads (in my experience) to a lot more wars breaking out.

2. Not tried it yet, sorry.

Maybe try playing against more warmongering civs as well. I find that some civs are impossible to please, very aggressive and will start wars with me all the time.

[Crossfire]

Play on the Pangea or Highlands maps. All that contact makes for lots of wars. You can also get quite good results by bribing other civs into declaring war on each other, then join in the pile on against the civ that starts losing.

[Forwarn45]

Thanks for these replies. This is a bump. I was just wondering whether there are more people that have tried the aggressive AI option. Let me know what you thought. And if you have any ideas on my other question, that would be great too.

[samspock]

I use it most of the time, mainly to get the ai to fight each other more and I do like it when the AI declares war on me just about the time I was about to attack them!

It can backfire though. I was playing gahndi on prince and did a cs slingshot only to see cyrus attack me with immortals. I beat him off (just to make sure I could) but did not bother playing beyond that.

[mkorin]

I always use aggressive AI. The AIs will almost never fight amongst themselve without it and will take turns tag teaming the player. With aggresive AI, I've found that the AIs will fight amonsgt themselves more often and not be too much more aggresive with you than normal. However, sometimes they get in a mode and will keep fighting until you or they are dead. However, this happens without aggressive AI turned on. So, IMO, Agressive AI is the only way to play.

Mike

[Dis]

my AI is too aggressive . I just got attacked by Victoria. I started next to america and England. I thought I would be in good shape not having starting next to an aggressive AI for once. I was wrong. We shared a religion too. They had no negative unhappy points against me. Even though we shared a border, we still didn't have border tension penalties yet. This is the first time I have been attacked so early in the game (just got my copper hooked up)

[Shaka II]

How could Victoria be so mean? You probably needed a bigger army to discourage this behavior.

I never tried the aggressive AI button, but have been tempted on numerous occasions. It would solve the AI too friendly to each other situation. The way I normally deal with this is by maintaining a tech lead and bribing civs to attack each other. The trick is to keep any one AI from becoming too strong, and assimulating them one by one. If a neighboring civ is strong then I bribe another civ to attack them, and when they're fully diverted, I go in for the land grab. If they weren't so friendly, I wouldn't have to be so under handed and backstabbing.

Between switching religions, civics, granting requests, and using tech bribes, there are enough ways to manipulate the AI to get around the AI friendliness. I think the most powerful diplomatic tool in the game is religion, so if you have several wordly religions,you can switch between them and befriend almost any civ long enough to bribe them into a war. When one civ has been attacked, they can be easily bribed to attack back. The key is to avoid any one civ from being too successful at it. If they start to break away, then they need to be dealt with. But the tech superiority you should now have will make that an easy affair.