Disappointing AI

[Dactyl]

I must confess that I think the AI in Bts is a disappointment. If you play with the default settings, then you get a game that is only a bit more aggressive than a SimCity-style sim. You don't even have to keep any kind of standing army to prevent invasion. I've played until into the 1700's on Prince level with nothing more than two armies in each city and none of the AI civs bothered to take advantage of that by attacking.

It's just the opposite with the aggressive AI setting. Then it's basically war all the time. If I wanted that, I'd play one of the Total War games. They do it better. I don't understand why there can't be a setting somewhere inbetween. I'm looking for something different in the Civ games, something between a empire-building game and a war game. It seemed that earlier versions of the game provided that.

[JimMac]

Yeah, my first few games give me the same impression.

I played three Noble games, default settings on epic speed. I played nearly to the end in each game. In one game I didn't have one non-barbarian fight! The other two games I had no more than two 'wars'.

Last night, following the advice in another thread here, I tried the same settings but with aggressive AI. What a difference!!

I was repeatedly attacked by Kublai Khan then eventually Qin Shi Huang joined in against me. I wasn't prepared for that and retired before I got completely destroyed.

Having said that, and although I consider myself a peaceful builder player, the last game was refreshingly ‘fun’. And as I was able to stay at peace with all the other civs, I don’t think it was completely crazy. I need to play some more with these settings before I could agree that it would always be “war all the time”.

I think my preference would be for somewhere in between the two settings though. Blakes idea of a slider would be the answer.

[Crossfire]

I find that it really depends a lot on 2 things; who my neighbors are, and who I share a religion with. I find that if I go for an early religion and then spread it to my neighbors I can keep them happy and avoid war. Except when I have someone like Monte or Shaka next to me, then I need to prepare for war. I had a game recently where I got attacked by 4 civs all at the same time at around 200bc, while playing without 'aggressive ai' even turned on. I lost that one needless to say!

[LDiCesare]

I didn't have the same experience. My current game on prince saw me declare war on my neighbour, Nappy attack Shaka, Gengis fight Isabella, all before the modern era. However in the 20th century, Elizabeth almost committeed suicide attacking me, after Wilhem had declared war on me too.
But the ai doesn't pick its targets right. Lizzy and Wilhem both attacked me where I had stacked 20+ units (cataphracts, riflemen, trebuchets, and infantry and cannons later on or when I upgraded some).
In my first game, while I was attacking Hannibal, he landed a settler + & longbow where I had just razed his city. I still had a stack of 10 units just besides.
So to me the ai on Prince doesn't decide intelligently when to attack but it does attack, even without aggressive ai.

[MoonWolf]

Have experienced war and invasion attempts on noble without "Aggressive AI". Think it's pretty random and as pointed here: who your neighbours are. Alexander declared war on my eventhough we had the same religion and didn't share borders (beside one city I placed closer to his lands but a bit away from my other cities)

[CreepyD]

I've had games without aggressive AI being on and there have been plenty of wars.
There seem to be a lot of AI to AI wars now which is good.
Also on Aggressive AI, you don't have to build lots of units, my last prince game I won a culture victory and had the weakest power the whole game. My tech lead allowed me to have very few units.

It all depends which AI's you have too, some will often declare war, and other's will not - whether you have aggressive AI on or not.

[ColdPhoenix]

It seems set to the correct level for me. Has anyone noticed that Hatshephut's personality seems to have changed a bit. I seem to remember her strongly disliking people of a different religion and being quite likely to attack them. In the couple of BtS games she's been in we've been different religions but good friends.

[The diplomat]

Re: Disappointing AI

Originally posted by Dactyl
I must confess that I think the AI in Bts is a disappointment. If you play with the default settings, then you get a game that is only a bit more aggressive than a SimCity-style sim. You don't even have to keep any kind of standing army to prevent invasion. I've played until into the 1700's on Prince level with nothing more than two armies in each city and none of the AI civs bothered to take advantage of that by attacking.

That has not been my experience. I never use "aggressive AI" and I have seen plenty of wars both against me and between the AI. In fact, in every game I've played so far where I had a minimal early military, I got crushed before the Middle Ages. I have found that if you let your military power slip compared to the AI, it will take advantage of it. The best way to avoid wars is to have a strong military and be nice diplomatically.

[Swiss Pauli]

I've been attacked by Ragnar and Kublai so far, which makes 2 out of three completed games. Kublai's attack was a bit weak, but Ragnar - who declared with his stacks in my territory (the swine) - caused me a good deal of problems, which could only be solved by masses of whipping and chopping. The upside was that once I'd seen off his threat, I had a large enough army to wipe him off the map.

[Blaupanzer]

Pauli, exactly the right response. Defend, then annihilate them.

The AI will attack if you get a lead or if they are aggressive by trait whenever they see an advantage. This can throw off a builder's schedule and disrupt science progress (diverting funds to avoid unhappy citizens.) Sometimes their attacks seem too wimpy or divided (or suicidal). More often then not, their number of units differential will be very high. Their "soldiers" really are troop units, not abstract representations of wonders and military buildings as shown on the demographics screen.

[Shrapnel12]

My first game of BtS was the most peaceful game I've ever played. In the entire game, I fought one war with Spain and that was it. This is not a complaint however as it makes perfect sense. I aggresively spread my religion and coverted all the other civs, then built the Apostolic Palace. I also was kind to my neighbors giving them gifts when they asked. The only war that broke out was because Isabella was stubborn in converting to the world religion (Taoism) and I decided to declare war on her, which was later joined by every other civ after a resolution was passed to destroy the infidel. Since then, the world knew peace. One thing I realized that I really liked, is I could tick off vassals of civs that were freindly to me and never worry about them declaring war.

[Wiglaf]

Aggressive AI will not always declare war. Calling it like the total war games is a bit of an overstatement.

I've played 2 games without aggressive AI on. There were a few things I noticed:
A) Nearly impossible to get a war with the AI
b) The world political map doesn't change much...AIs rarely invade and conquer other AIs

What you get is pretty boring. Aggressive AI means that you cannot ignore your military, that's all. You can still use diplomacy and religion to make (effectively) permanent allies and blocs. But if a civ isn't on the best terms with you, you can't just ignore him because he will attack you if you're weak.

[Fan2]

While my experience is limited, I have to disagree! In my game, I started off by declaring war on Julius early on as i knew he'd be a thorn in my side. Shaka was to my east and the Native Americans were NE and the Ottomans were NW.

Shaka declared war on the Native Americans and probably would have wiped them out if I hadn't bribed them to stop.

The Babylonians had a short war with the Persians (I think that's who they were) and gained a strategic isthumus city. Babylonians went wild with colonizing and soon had half the map as colonies.

There was a brief war then between the Japanese and the babylonians and Persians but it was fought to a draw.

There were a couple more wars between Shaka and various non-bordering nations but they didn't amount to much because of the distance but I could see armies fighting back and forth on neutral land.

I had a couple brief border wars with the Ottomans and Persians but not much came out of that. Initiated by them by the way.

Then I started taking a more active role and bribed the Persians to take on the Babylonians who took back their isthmus city and indeed several more making it all the way to the Babylonian capital. I actually sent about ten tanks and anti-tank infantry to the Babylonians to help shore up their defence.

But right before that I had declared war on Shaka and beat them into submission before they tricked me and capitulated to the Ottomans who were allied with me in the fight.

Back to the Babylonians, they eventually made piece with the Persians and then wound up making the rest of their continental cities (about 5 in all) into a colony moving their capital overseas onto an island they had settled and now dominated!

That's where I am at right now. I went from 2nd or 3rd place up to first thanks to my bit of bribery and also forgot to mention that I just took the Native Americans as a vassal since they went to war with my Japanese allies.

This is all on Noble without the Aggressive AI.

I'm not saying the AI is perfect but I do think it doesn't hesitate to declare war when it wants to.

[Saurus]

Re: Disappointing AI

Originally posted by Dactyl
I must confess that I think the AI in Bts is a disappointment. If you play with the default settings, then you get a game that is only a bit more aggressive than a SimCity-style sim. You don't even have to keep any kind of standing army to prevent invasion. I've played until into the 1700's on Prince level with nothing more than two armies in each city and none of the AI civs bothered to take advantage of that by attacking.

It's just the opposite with the aggressive AI setting. Then it's basically war all the time. If I wanted that, I'd play one of the Total War games. They do it better. I don't understand why there can't be a setting somewhere inbetween. I'm looking for something different in the Civ games, something between a empire-building game and a war game. It seemed that earlier versions of the game provided that.

Playing my first pangea-game right now on monach level,
I agree.
There is no less than 5 different state religions spread out over the continent. It is not the most warlike setup of civs the wortld has ever seen but the strange thing is that despite there beeing 5 different religions spread out, no A.I has a relation with another A.I witch is worse than "Cautious" ... and only 1 A.I is annoyed toward me.
(he was still willing to sign open borders though)
A.I also do no longer seem to have a "worst enemy" -setting. So far they have not demand me to cancel deals with X or Y civilization thus maintaining relations with even those of a another religion seems very easy now.


Just what happened to the "normal" game?

[Blaupanzer]

Saurus, on Aggressive AI, when an "annoyed" civ permits open borders, that means it wants to scout you before it attacks. Maybe not in your described game, but it's happened to me in 3 of the last 7 game.