This game is starting to frustrate me!

[Zoid]

I´m playing my second warlords game on Monarch. And I´m firmly in the top three with the top position shifting between me, Cyrus and Louis (I´m Agustus Ceasar). I think this is my best game ever! Previously I´ve had my ass handed to me on levels above Noble every time in Civ4. But I seem to be doing everything right this time, can´t really tell what I´m doing different though... Warlords isn´t easier than vanilla by any chance...?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Solver
The fact that you've been playing Civ for a long time means, to be blunt, very little. Civ4 is very, very different. As you obviously know. Heck, I've played every previous Civ game. My first game of Civ4, on Noble, I got my butt kicked - and that was well before the release, consequently, with a significantly weaker AI. Why? Because I hadn't gotten used to the differences (obviously, first game), and previous Civ experience means little.

You just didn't go through the entire Civ learning curve thanks to your experience. That's about it. Strategically speaking, your previous Civ experience and skills are at least 90% irrelevant. This is true of every veteran Civ player.

I don't agree on 90% - I played my first game on noble, and narrowly won. I applied principles from earlier games to do this, as of course I didn't know any Civ4 specific strats at that time.

[Solver]

Well, I applied principles from earlier games, too. Which was why I lost. Among principles I applied were, expand a lot early, and hope to buy a bunch of techs with gold. Not the best ideas exactly .

[Diadem]

Well cheating by editing the game parameters is not the solution imho. Just drop to warlords then. Beating the game on warlords is much more satistying than beating the game on noble by cheating.

Besides, the AI is still dumb enough to need some types of bonusses. If you just level all bonusses to human standards you kill the AI off. Even at settler difficulty the AI still gets bonusses in some areas - and major penalties in others.

Those difficulty levels were put there for a reason! Use them, instead of cheating by editing the game parameters - only to satisfy your pride.

If you really want to learn, post your savegames. That is the best way to learn, by analyzing your games together with very good players.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Solver
Well, I applied principles from earlier games, too. Which was why I lost.

Well it may have been your application rather than the principles themselves.

[Senethro]

Wrong.

Then why do AIs float merrily along, letting you walk sedately to Spaceship/Culture victories? They don't identify a win condition and try to reach it unless its handed to them on a plate and do little to prevent you reaching yours.

[Solver]

Well, you quite obviously don't have any idea of how challenging AI programming is. The AI isn't programmed to let you win the game on purpose, and tons of work have been put into the AI. It is, however, extremely challenging programming, which is why the AI isn't perfect. Not that it could be.

Of course, some parts of AI behaviour are a design decision. For example, if the AIs tried always to prevent you from winning, that would be boring. No one would find it fun to play against an AI the primary goal of which is to prevent the human from winning. Because what would these AIs do? They would all team up on human, and attack him. That's Civ2 behaviour - everyone teams up and attacks the human.

The AIs do not try to achieve victory in any focused manner except Spaceship, that's true. This is a weakness of the AI because of implementation challenges. (Fortunately, Blake has improved on that as well.) The AI could be made to try to interfere with your victory much more actively, but that would be extremely boring. If you want, I can make a few changes to the AI code to make them hate the human and work against him - will you find that fun ?

[Zoid]

Question: Is Blakes AI incorporated in warlords or do you have to download it as a mod?

[Solver]

Something else. The amount of time and effort spent programming the AI is actually not proportional to the amount of players who care about that. Remember, the hardcore players, such as the members of these forums, are overall a small minority of all Civ4 players. Just as with almost any game, the majority of people who buy the game are more casual.

Now, these casual Civ4 players, they do not care about most of the AI programming. Some of them want an easy game, others don't. But even the casuals who don't want an easy game usually play on Noble or below (Warlord is more common actually, I believe), and find that they have enough challenge for their liking. Firaxis might put quite some effort into ensuring (just an example) the AI is able to distinguish between situations when pillaging is better, and when attacking a city is better. The hardcore audience cares about that. However, those casual players, which make up the majority of the market, don't - they simply do not pay attention to such relatively small details, and they certainly can find a challenge as it is.

So in the end, a lot of the work on the various aspects of the AI is done to please people like us.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Zoid
Question: Is Blakes AI incorporated in warlords or do you have to download it as a mod?

Patch 2.08 has Blake's improvements. However, after the patch released, Blake made further significant changes, which you need to download.

[Zoid]

Cool. I´ll do that.

[Senethro]

Originally posted by Solver
Something else. The amount of time and effort spent programming the AI is actually not proportional to the amount of players who care about that. Remember, the hardcore players, such as the members of these forums, are overall a small minority of all Civ4 players. Just as with almost any game, the majority of people who buy the game are more casual.

Now, these casual Civ4 players, they do not care about most of the AI programming. Some of them want an easy game, others don't. But even the casuals who don't want an easy game usually play on Noble or below (Warlord is more common actually, I believe), and find that they have enough challenge for their liking. Firaxis might put quite some effort into ensuring (just an example) the AI is able to distinguish between situations when pillaging is better, and when attacking a city is better. The hardcore audience cares about that. However, those casual players, which make up the majority of the market, don't - they simply do not pay attention to such relatively small details, and they certainly can find a challenge as it is.

So in the end, a lot of the work on the various aspects of the AI is done to please people like us.

Which is a long form of what I said.

I'm quite aware of how difficult it is to make good AI on a tactical level but, as you said, I'm asserting that the strategic AI could be greatly improved.

As for the AI ganging up on a human player, I've had that already when I played with Aggressive AI. If the AI would play as hard with each other as with me, I'd be happy. As it is, I can cause more wars without Aggressive AI as I have more allies that can be manipulated into war.


Zoid: For a Demogame, it might be better to wait for a version that Blake says is stable. THere have been a couple of (rapidly fixed) CTD bugs in recent vers.

[Solver]

You're only taking the challenge factor into account, not the fun factor. But the AI consists of both. The strategic AI could be improved a lot, and easily - in its challenge factor. However, improving the strategic AI in a way to maintain both factors can't really be accomplished easily. Giving the AI any sort of long-term thinking is even harder than getting it to work right on a tactical level.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Senethro


Zoid: For a Demogame, it might be better to wait for a version that Blake says is stable. THere have been a couple of (rapidly fixed) CTD bugs in recent vers.

Ok, if it affects the demo game I´ll wait. I thought it was some kind of separate mod thingie...

[mutax2003]

You can try a couple of games at monarch, which will force to unlearn those strategies that do not work. Then go back and try noble, you will find it an easier game. I did that before when I was on monarch by trying some immortal games.