Worst enemy indicator mod.

[Cort Haus]

Once upon a time I had a mod installed on my vanilla Civ 4 which displayed the AI 's worst enemy on the diplo screen. I reinstalled recently to start playing again and would like to add this mod again. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[MoonWolf]

Do you have BtS? If yes, it's already there

[Cort Haus]

I don't have BtS and I'm not sure if I want to get it. The AI sounds insanely aggressive and if it includes Blake's extreme poprushing code I'd probably rather give it a miss. I find the game challenging enough as it is.

[MoonWolf]

Ah, I understand Well, sorry, then I can't help you.

Will recommend giving BtS a try though. It has a lot of new features and flavours. You can just play on noble or lower if you feel underpowered. You can also disable the Espionage feature if that's something you feel may ruin your game (which it will sometimes). Besides that, BtS is the best version of Civ I've tried in the 15 years I've been playing the game

[Cort Haus]

You may have talked me into it. I do have the Warlords expansion, which I'm not playing at the moment because I'm just coming back to Civ after a couple of years away from it, and I'm starting with the o.v. to re-familiarise myself with the game.

I quite like being familiar with the well-known AI 'personalities' for now and it takes so long to play a game that there is plenty of variety of trait combos to play as.

Does BtS still have the unbalanced diplo where AI's never make 'stop trading with' demands of each other, or can they now suffer that penalty like the human?

Do they also still have very cheap unit upgrade and support costs?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
The AI sounds insanely aggressive and if it includes Blake's extreme poprushing code I'd probably rather give it a miss. I find the game challenging enough as it is.

It's really not as bad as you think. It's somewhat more aggresive than it was but I'd hardly call it an insane change. And that's mainly restricted to the usual culprits like Monty and now Shaka. Most of the other civs are just as easy to get along with as before, provided you maintaing a decent military. With a strong enough army you can sometimes go an entire game still without ever being in a war. The main difference between BtS and previous AIs is that it is now better at exploiting the player's weakness, so as long as you remain strong you'll be fine. You're missing out on a lot by not trying it out, and it seems rather silly since you're only avoiding it from hearsay.

[johnmcd]

You should definitely get it, the AI knowns how to play the game now, it's feels much more even. Maybe drop down a difficulty level, but enjoy it more.

[Arrian]

Actually, I find the AI in patched BtS to be pretty reasonable. If you turn on "aggressive AI" then they get better (better as in if you overextend yourself or fail to build a proper army, they will in fact come after you). But you don't have to turn on Agg AI. edit: yeah, it's true that Monty is a nutbag either way, so if he's a neighbor you know what's coming (there is a certain peace in that). The others are deterrable. Some are downright peacenicks.

Regarding trades - you can turn "no tech brokering" on if you're concerned about the AIs whoring...

-Arrian

[Blaupanzer]

Shaka and Tokugawa plus Isabella if you are not her religion are almost as unreasonable as Monty. However, if you alter your strategy based on their presence, then their predictability becomes your friend. I usually play with aggressive AI on and do not find myself involved in more wars than normal -- unless I neglect army and wall building. Knowing the AI WILL eat you if they can makes the whole army-building process make more sense. Enjoy the best version of Civ since 1991, i.e., ever!

[Diadem]

Tokugawa is just downright annoying. He never opens borders, never wants to trade. He's basically just a big stupid obstacle on your map.

He's rarely problematic though. His stupid behavior not only slows him down in teching, it also usually leads to all the AIs hating him.

If I have both Tokugawa and Monty in a single game, they usually end up cancelling eachother

[rah]

YEah, Tok is harder because of the no early open borders. It's hard to send a missionary to make him your religion. And he never seems to get one. Waiting for it to spread normally can be painful.
And then you get to +3 and he's still cautious. It's easier just to eliminate him before he gets his UU.

[Cort Haus]

I keep getting Monty and Toku as continental neighbours. In my current game (standard map, fractal continents, normal speed, Prince, 8 starting civs) I took Monty's religion and joined him against Mansa to coddle up and gain some turf. I later eliminated Toku and got to Friendly with Monty which allowed me to send a Bombers/Tanks/Inf/Arty amy overseas to zap Julius without being attacked by Monty.

The remaining other three are Monty, Alex (who ate China early on and is decent size) and Roosvelt, who Monty is at 'war' with (no great intercontinental invasions though) and against whom I will join the fray next. If I take the American land, I just need to take either Alex or Monty's land for domination, but there are only about 90 turns left.

Monty is the only other civ on my continent but he is the strongest (and my best pal) so taking out Theo and Alex is probably the route to domination, but I don't know if I have enough time left. I think there might be, if I don't delay much - but I currently need to consolidate my ex-Roman territory.

[Cort Haus]

That's vanilla, btw.

[MoonWolf]

If I'm going to invade someone I either do it by total suprise or I land some strong units on a tile with defence bonus and have defenders with defence bonus for that tile (e.g. hills/ forest promotions). I just leave them there to have the enemy waste their units trying to attack them (this will not work as well in BtS 3.17 as the AI is smarter there).

While the AI is wasting units, it will be easier for my mainforce later to invade. What I normally do anyway in both these cases, is to have a fleet of destroyers, battleships and carriers. I use the shis to bombard defences and fighters from the carriers to attack the defence units. Next, I will launch an amphibious attack taking that city. Just have enough units to attack and defend the newly captured city. Move bombers in the new city to support later on.

Next turn, move your fleet to the next coastal city and repeat. Also use the bombers you moved in last turn to soften the units.

If you have enough tanks (and possibly helicopters; they come later in BtS than Vanilla IIRC) for the inland cities, you should be able take one city pr. 1-3 turns. In my games, when I launch a modern attack, things happens very fast. Only rarely will an attack on a city last >1 turn (I will still use bombers to soften other units preventing them from attack though).

[Cort Haus]

Yes, I used lots of sea and air power against Rome, including a squad of Marines which are very effective against Rifles. I was able to launch my assault from a neighbouring civ, including bombers operating from their cities. I hardly used the arty I brought , as the tanks quickly reached the inland cities softened by the bombers. When they have no air defences or naval resistance it's all a bit of a turkey shoot. I think I cut through the whole Civ in about 10 turns.