This game is starting to frustrate me!

[Dis]

I'm a noble player, and I still play (and win) at noble. But it is a closer race. It does require me to be more aggressive. Sadly, this means I have to go to war to win the game. You have to take chunks out of the top AI's (or if they are too far away, attack the weak ones and build yourself up more). No more pure builder style for me.

[JackRudd]

The other thing you might want to pick up on is that the AI you're facing off against is Mehmed. Mehmed is Expansive/Organized. Organized is a trait that allows you to run much larger empires at significantly lowered costs.

[Dis]

One thing I just thought of is now the game is harder, I won't be able to break my high score. Too bad the score at the end of the game can't reflect this.

[Willem]

Well I just ran a game on Noble with Blake's new upgrades, while eliminating all the AI bonuses that I could see in HandicapsInfo. And it was real nail-biter! I had to work to just keep myself in 4th place, and it was a struggle keeping up in tech. The best I could manage was only falling behind by a couple of techs, and that with trading as much as I could. And while I was building up my military as fast as I could, I only managed to be in the middle of the pack power wise. Unfortunately I ran into a repeatable crash during the Middle Ages so I don't know how things would have gone in the late game.

But it seems to me that Noble can now be a level field between the AI and the human, as it is meant to be. Now if only Blake would get rid of that "meets human" unit bonus that was mentioned so we can truly make it even.

One thing I noticed is that AI finally knows how to deal with Barbs. Before it used to send out a unit or two to attack the cities, but no longer. Cyrus had a stack of 10 Immortals to do battle with some Barbs in my area, and Hannibal had another large stack of Chariots, Numidian Horsemen and Archers. And there was one thing that surprised me. When I saw that Hannibal was after a barb city near me, I beat him to the punch. But rather than turn his troops around and send them home as I expected him to do, he parked them near my border and just had them sit there. It made me very nervous having a large stack of units sitting right next door to me I can tell you. It took me awhile to build up enough troops in order to counter his.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Dis
One thing I just thought of is now the game is harder, I won't be able to break my high score.

You can if you improve.

[Nacht]

What entries did you change Willem?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Nacht
What entries did you change Willem?

They get same bonuses against the Barbs that I do, Inflation rate is now the same, ditto the unit supply cost. War weariness is now 100%, which I'm presuming is what the human's is. They pay 100% on unit upgrades as well. There might be a couple of other things as well that I can't remember right now. And still they're kicking my a**!

BTW, do you happen to know what percentage that "meets human" bonus is? It ocurred to me that I could easily compensate for that by increasing the costs in HandicapInfo. Is that a production bonus or a supply cost one? Of course that would mean they would actually have a disadvantage until they met me, but that usually isn't too long into the game playing on Marathon.

[Willem]

Ooops, double post.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Willem
BTW, do you happen to know what percentage that "meets human" bonus is?

It isn't a percentage. The unit upkeep depends mostly on your total amount of units. A certain number of 'free units' is subtracted from that total, partly depending upon your population. An AI that has met a human player gets an additional number of free units twice the number of cities it has. Additionally, its target number of defenders per city is increased by one if an AI meets a human.

Originally posted by Willem
They get same bonuses against the Barbs that I do, Inflation rate is now the same, ditto the unit supply cost.

I am especially interested in what you did with < iUnitCostPercent > and < iAIUnitCostPercent > which are 50 and 100 respectivily on Noble. This has led a number of people to believe that the AI is paying more upkeep than humans, which isn't true.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Nacht
I am especially interested in what you did with < iUnitCostPercent > and < iAIUnitCostPercent > which are 50 and 100 respectivily on Noble. This has led a number of people to believe that the AI is paying more upkeep than humans, which isn't true.

Since I am one who has increased iUnitCostPercent to 100, please explain. Also give your sources, if you would.

[Nacht]

iUnitCostPercent is applied to everyone, AI and humans alike, so by raising it to 100 you made units costlier for everyone and expansion much more difficult.

iAIUnitCostPercent is only applied to the AI. 100 means that is will be left unchanged as is expected for Noble. At higher levels it's a lower number.

Source? well the function: CvPlayer::calculateUnitCost() in the file CvPlayer.cpp of the SDK.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Nacht
I am especially interested in what you did with < iUnitCostPercent > and < iAIUnitCostPercent > which are 50 and 100 respectivily on Noble. This has led a number of people to believe that the AI is paying more upkeep than humans, which isn't true.

I didn't touch those. iUnitcost didn't indicate it had anything to do with the AI, and iAIUnitCost was already at 100% so I left it as is. There really wasn't all that much that had to be changed. And judging by my last few games, the AI is still very effective. I do fine until the late Middle Ages then it starts leaving me behind in the dust. I still haven't figured out the best way to counter it yet. I've really had to change my way of playing, though for the better. Overall I'm becoming much more efficient. Now if only I can become effective as well.

[Kataphraktoi]

Smile

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.

Im so tired of hearing this tripe. I played all the civ games, and the like, and played noble on a large mediterrainian map with 6 players on ym first game and won by ICSing and using tanks\bombers to blitz in the 1700s. I used forest chops to get a leg up on the AI.and had no clue what great leaders were, etc, of course.

No offense, and the AI really is great compared to the other previous games.

[Solver]

Non-normal things are possible under non-normal settings. Large maps with 6 players work rather differently than normal settings do. Still, ICS is dead .

[trev]

I have moved away from the massive amount of cottage spam I used to do and find I can win reasonably often on Monarch, I instead have focused more efforts on hammer production, and also getting a few wonders built, and settling the resultant GP in my capital. I concentrate on wonders that generate Great Prophets and Great Engineers with some Great Scientists as well. The advantage of this approach is that the settled Great People assist with hammers, money and science, allowing a greater rate of military production as well as getting more building built. In particular if the civics of beaucracy and representation are used, science output can be high as well.
Before I struggled to maintain a army that could win wars against the AI, now with greater hammer production that is much less of a problem, the lack of production associated with cottage spam is a real issue in this game.