CIV IV makes me sad

[Arrian]

1. 70% is not a lock. You will generally win 7 of 10, but bad runs of luck can happen. I've lost battles with 96% odds of victory, several times. I've also won a battle with 7% odds of victory, and several in the teens (catapults).

2. "Seeing a huge AI army stack of good units appear on your border while you're left to defend with only a few more advanced units really leaves you only hanging on to those precious percentages." Build more units. If you put all your eggs in one basket you're gonna get burned.

3. The AI gets bonuses, even at Noble level. Among them are lower unit support costs and big discounts on upgrade costs. The AI is pretty dumb, though.

-Arrian

[DaveMcW]

Originally posted by Arrian
3. The AI gets bonuses, even at Noble level. Among them are lower unit support costs and big discounts on upgrade costs. The AI is pretty dumb, though.

As stated previously, the AI get higher support costs on Noble.

[Blake]

And technically the Noble AI's economies ARE actually crippled. For an expert player, there is almost no single handicap able to slow them down to the level of a Noble AI. For example to prove this point (to myself) a while ago I played a game vs a Noble AI where I played the restriction of no terrain improvement at all (Except minimal road network) on an all-land map (no coastal commerce), when invading the AI's I pillaged the territory clean - so no cheating by taking the AI's improvements. I systematically conquered the AI's while staying ahead in research, was #1 to Liberalism, won a domination victory.

Another game I just played was more restrictive - playing as Mongols, proper nomad style, no terrain improvements except roads and horse pastures, no forest-chopping, no city improvements or wonders, no civics, no religion and ALL captured cities must be razed. I easily overran all the noble AI's (they included Mansa Musa, Alexander and Caesar - who got his Praets out :P ). I still outteched the AI's despite all the economic restrictions!

This should give you some indication of just how far from optimal the Noble AI's play actually is - if you're unable to effortlessly crush the Noble AI it's just because you still have much to learn about CIV, not because the AI has overpowering bonuses.

[ChITty]

Yeah yeah Blake, I see you throw in comments in every thread... generally pretty useless ones like the one above. I'm sure you used some rinse and repeat technology strat, which as I said earlier, is not something I'm particularly interested. You post doesn't address the support cost question, but you're special anyway.


Build more units how? With the zero cash I have? You can only turn out so many units in a given period of time.

So, gentlemen, with all else being equal... how can they afford their huge armies? I automate workers, and I know that's not optimal, but assuming my workers are doing the same things their workers are... how can they afford their armies yet maintain as high if not higher levels of technology?

[Thedrin]

Build more units how? With the zero cash I have? You can only turn out so many units in a given period of time.

So, gentlemen, with all else being equal... how can they afford their huge armies?

Do they build less settlers?

[ChITty]

Less settlers isn't it, they seemingly always have more cities than I do.

[Thedrin]

Are you building buildings in cities that don't need them, e.g. libraries in cities with 2 research, barracks in cities with hardly any production?

Are you connecting up your cities via roads and the sailing technology?

Are you signing open border agreements?

Do you finish settler expansion when research drops below 70%?

Are you building too many wonders?

Are you putting your research into going straight down one branch of the research tree?

Nobel isn't anywhere near as difficult as you make it seem. There is no magic strategy needed to beat it. If you can't then I would put it down to a failure on your part to understand the game mechanics.

Oh, and seriously; turn off automated workers. If you believe that the AI bonuses are such an insurmountable advantage then you need to take advantage of your ability to make better use of workers.

Edit: Lots of people enjoy playing below Noble difficulty level with no intention of trying more difficult settings. Good for them. If you don't want to learn how to play at noble then just stick with a lower difficulty level.

[Blake]

ChITty, it's simple, the Noble AI's are better players than you!

If you want a quick hint:
In the city screen, there's these 5 maximize buttons. You want to set EVERY city to "Maximize Food, Maximise Production, Maximize Commerce". This doesn't do anything magical, but it does force the governor to assign the workforce to the best tiles - you might think that would be his default behaivour, but no, it isn't. Basically by default he's a moron and doesn't care if the city doesn't grow, he'll be happy to let a city with a happy cap of 8 to stay at size 3, growth in 20 turns... "Maximize Everything" forces him to emphasize growth, so cities will QUICKLY grow to their caps and thus be like twice as productive. You'll have to adapt to the faster growth - more workers to improve tiles, more whipping to kill off surplus population, more assigning of specialists. If you can then balance your (maximized productivity) empire to have most worked tiles improved at all times and very little unhappyness then you'll be well on the way to economic mastery. The AI can NOT do this, it uses default moron governor settings and it can barely improve its terrain.

[padillah]

Originally posted by ChITty
Yeah yeah Blake, I see you throw in comments in every thread... generally pretty useless ones like the one above. I'm sure you used some rinse and repeat technology strat, which as I said earlier, is not something I'm particularly interested.

Do you honestly think the AI is "comming up with something new" every time you play?

There are "bad" ways to play CIV. I've pioneered most of them Just because the strategy you want to use doesn't actually work does not mean the AI is cheating or CIV is worthless - it means you shouldn't use that strategy, it sucks.

Build more units how? With the zero cash I have? You can only turn out so many units in a given period of time.

Given that several users here have beat the AI on Noble and it's regarded as being possible in every way, we must be doing something wrong. Notice I group myself in with you, at least in as much as I can't seem to win this darn game in any meaningfull way. I too am suffering under the delusion that I am playing well. Apparently I am wrong, otherwise I'd win.

So, gentlemen, with all else being equal... how can they afford their huge armies? I automate workers, and I know that's not optimal, but assuming my workers are doing the same things their workers are... how can they afford their armies yet maintain as high if not higher levels of technology?

Post a game. Start a game in the strat thread and post a savegame. That's what I've done (I need to get back to it but...).

I've already learned several things I was doing poorly. Going after wonders that didn't help, I just thought you should go after wonders. Overpreparing for the AI to attack early (which it never did). Having only two warriors to defend a city during the late early-game (the AI walked all over me).

You may want to stop and think: are you loosing because CIV is such a bad game or are you really not very good at it (like me and Rasputin and a few others)?

Tom P.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
How many times have we seen this argument throughout the series?

Civ1: Its so unfair that my battleship attacking an enemy city was sunk!!! And I think the AI is controlling those volcanos. Just when I couldn't afford to lose a city, the volcano blew up and destroyed it allowing the COMPUTER to win! Egads! Civ 1 sucks, I can't wait until Civ2.

Civ2: I had Alpine Troops fortified on a mountain - in a chokepoint. It's so unfair that I only killed 12 enemy Marines before the Alpine unit was killed. What is this, lose on one unit and the entire stack is killed? I hate Civ 2, I can't wait until Civ2 MP is out.

Civ2 MP: What is this bs? The human players are smarter than the AI? The opponents used to be so predictable! I'm actually losing battles, wars and games now. I hate Civ2 MP, I can't wait until Civ3 is out.

Civ3: What is wrong with the combat in this version? I have no idea what the odds are when attacking enemy troops? I don't want to attack unless I'm ensured of victory. I just lost a unit while destroying an entire AI civilization - that really sucks. I hate Civ3, I can't wait until they release an expansion pack.

Civ3 PTW: Didn't they learn from their last multi-player release? Civ3 PTW sucks! Human players are better than the AI players and that's no good for me. I'm losing too many games - give me the predictable AI players again! I can't wait unitl they release ANOTHER expansion pack.

Civ3 Conquests: I hate this version. It used to be that you could attack ONE enemy unit and the entire stack was destroyed. Now, it's just destroying one unit at a time. This has ruined my entire strategy - I'm actually losing units. I hate Civ3 Conquests, I can't wait until cIV.

cIV: What is wrong with the combat in this version? I don't want to know what the odds are when attacking! Since when does 70% mean 70%? I hate cIV, I can't wait until they release an expansion pack.

cIV Warlords template: I hate cIV Warlords. They changed the _____ which now causes me to lose ________. I don't like the _______ and they should change the _________ back to the __________. I hate cIV Warlords, I can't wait until they release another expansion pack and/or (circle one) Civ V.

[rah]

Blake keeps repeating because people keep asking.
I always like to read Blake's posts when I reach a frustrating level in the game. He reminds me that I'm still stupid about certain aspects of the game and I just need to work at it.

The beauty of CIV IV is that after 6 months, I'm not dominating the AI at the highest levels of diffuculty. I'm not even sure that after a few years of complete disection of the game mechanics here that a win will be automatic at the upper level. So I can grouse about not being able to always beat monarch at all the possible victory conditions, but happy knowing that the game still will have a long shelf life for playing.

But of course the only reason I'm still playin SP is to hone up for all the guys that kick my butt in MP.

We still play CIV II MP every now and then. May CIV IV be like that after 5 years.

[Son of David]

There are certain points, however, when a game is almost unwinnable.

For example, choosing a warlike civ with a horse-based special unit, discovering you have no horses, no one will trade you for them; your neighbours are all financial with cities on flood plains, while you are stuck with plains and the odd hill; etc.

It's very frustrating but sometimes you just have to restart a game, because the randomly-generated allocation of resources has been so unfortunate for you. (If I remember correctly, RTS games like Age of Empires don't have this problem, everyone gets the same amount of resources nearby.)


It's the sense of powerlessness that is frustrating, not the sense of being challenged by the AI per se. (Close late-games in the modern age in my opinion are thrilling, the best part of the game.)

[Thedrin]

Doesn't the Balanced map reduce the chances of this happening?

But yeah, if you get a bad start that can end chances of winning a game.

[ChITty]

In reference to Thedrin's post.

1. No. No libraries until they're useful.
2. Yup, asap.
3. For the most part unless I'm trying to bar access to a juicy city spot I haven't kicked out a settler for yet.
4. I've tinkered with the CS slingshot using the Oracle, but as I've said, they leave a bad taste in my mouth. After Oracle I'd head for the great library.
5. Yes
6. With the CS slingshot yes. Outside of that, I generally focus on things that will up my commerce as much as possible and head for gunpowder units.

I've have beaten it on Noble. I'm not trying to make it sound incredibly difficult, as apparently people have interpreted my comments. It's more annoying and unfun than anything else. Somewhere the AI has bonuses on Noble (supporting armies of their size and their tech without them). Even in this thread, one person said it does, another person said the player has bonuses. Screw the bonuses. If Noble is truly balanced, neither side should have bonuses. If the AI sucks, then the developers should have improved that so that these retarded bonuses wouldn't have to be relied on to make the computer competive on the "balanced" setting.

I don't have the gaming time to be improving every single square. One of the things that interested me about CIV IV was the worker automation out of the box. Assuming that the workers are automating my land the same as the AI's it should be a non-issue. But, you're right, because they've propped up the AI somehow, that would be a way to get a leg up on them. However, that isn't a very fun process, which is presumably why they sold worker automation as a new feature out of the box with Civ IV.

[padillah]

Re: Re: CIV IV makes me sad

Originally posted by MightyTiny
And herein lies the rub: most people don't understand some of the important things about randomness...

Thank you for posting this. I was about to until I saw what a great job you did.

I am writting and improving WorldPainter and I have had my share of run-ins with "randomness". I'll be testing it and set the mountian percent at a ridiculously low setting and still get mountains in several places. So I start investingating and soon realise that a standard map is 84x52 that's 4368 chances to beat even the smallest odds.

This means that even a 1% chance will be beat at least 43 times.

Tom P.