Trouble on Warlord with AI...

[Melboz99]

Hey all,

I've been playing Civilization since Civ II in 1996, near a decade and a half. I'm still finding it frustrating that I'm still having difficulty being successful at higher diff levels, including Warlord.

I'm starting to realize I may have a few hangover habits from when I was younger and less experienced, and the game strategy was different, but still, this AI cheats WAY too much!

The last game I was in, the AI beat me to all 3 of the first religions, 2 of which by 1 turn. After that, I was getting hit by a horde of barbarians, and 1 turn before I completed the Great Wall, another AI finished it first.

Here's where it gets damn creepy. I've been making it a habit to scout out the enemy on a near constant basis, keep tabs on his units. There have been numerous times when all I can find are 2 archers per city, plus a stack of 4 swordsmen holed up as an attack / retaliation group. Then I go and attack and suddenly there's 2x as many units, including spearmen and even pikemen, axemen, and longbowman.

One game I went and attacked and suddenly realized EVERY fraking archer, 2-3 per city, had been upgraded to longbowman, just before I entered his territory.

Other times I'll have intelligence on their city and they've got a castle building at 1/14 turns, next turn it's built, mysteriously out of nowhere.


The AI always seems to know what I'm doing, whether it be what tech I'm working on, what wonder I'm trying to build, even where I'm trying to place a city. They also seem to have this unreal ability to upgrade units and create an army at a moment's notice.

My goal for the past 3 years of playing CIV has been to be confident at a more middle-of-the-road diff level such as Noble, but I can't even master Warlord yet!

What gives?

Thanks,
Dan O.

[Brael]

Knowing your play habits would help. One of the big things is you need to specialize and set clear goals. Only go for those goals. If you lost all three religions on warlord, you likely didn't prioritize them. At that level, even without mysticism you can almost always get Hinduism and certainly Judiasm.

The great wall sounds similar. In civ you can't have everything, it's all about tradeoffs. When you set a specific goal to go for, you can miss the benefits of another tech. If you go for Polytheism (Hinduism) first it gives a civ that goes for Masonry time to build the GW but if you go for the GW there's a very high chance another civ will found Hinduism first. You need to decide which one you want and then go for it. If you wanted a religion was Meditation/Polytheism your first (second if you don't start with Mysticism) research? If you wanted the GW did you go for Masonry as your first or second tech? (Mining or Mysticism are the pre req's).

As for the war scenario, the AI had those units already. They were either outside of the city or in a nearby city and moved to the city you were heading to.

When archers turn to longbows they were upgraded. The AI loves to upgrade units, it gets a discount on it and it does it a lot. I bet if you talked to that AI before and after the upgrades you would have seen a big difference in the amount of gold they had available.

The castle example sounds like the building was rushed. In that era most likely through slavery. Did you see a difference in the city size? The AI isn't ultra efficient with whipping but if a civ is running slavery the AI will use it quite a bit. During peace it will whip out buildings, during war it will whip an army.

All of these things the AI does you can do too.

[wodan11]

I would guess you're having a fun, relaxed game. In other words, you're going for techs that don't really help to your military might (religions), you're making wonders that you could do without, etc.

Try a game where you don't build a single wonder and don't try to get religions. Focus on military and basic economy (either cottages or scientists). Nothing else.

Not that you have to play that way to do well on those higher levels, but doing it once or twice will help you learn how to optimize your play and really focus on the bottom line when you have to.

[Norselord]

I am by no means an expert, but I have won some games.

Consider the following rhetorical questions:
- How do you want to win the game? Domination? Diplo? Culture? Space Race?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your leader's traits?
- How do you build your attacking force?
----what size?
----how many units?
----what mix of units?
----what type of units can the enemy field?
- Which buildings help your civic? (hint: granaries + slavery)
- How will you fund research?
----what are the basic needs for a cottage economy?
----what are the basic needs of a specialist economy?
----what other options exist for funding research?
- Which AI will be your ally (Friendly) no matter what?
----which of your ally's requests should you accept to get them to Friendly?
----which of your ally's requests can you deny and still maintain good relations?
- Which AI will be your and your ally's enemy?
----Can you afford to jump into a war that your ally started?
- How many cities do you anticipate needing in each era?
- What types of city specializations are there?
----What are the resource/building requirements for a Great Person farm?
----What are the resource/building requirements for a Financial city?
----What are the resource/building requirements for a Military city?
----What are the resource/building requirements for a Culture City?
----What are the resource/building requirements for a Capital?
- What mix of specialized cities do you expect to need?
- What is the bare minimum of City improvements needed in each city?
- Can you afford to grant your overseas colonies independence?
- What is the best way to use siege units?
- What are the key units for each era?
- Is it better to have many average units, or an average number of well promoted units?
- What are the advantages of pillaging your enemy's terrain improvements?
- Should you raze a city or absorb it into your empire?
- Which technologies should you beeline to?

[Ming]

Knowing your play habits would help.

Ture enough... tell us a little bit more about
The research path you take
The Civ you were playing
The type of map you were playing
What your early goals were

Or maybe even play 100 turns on a new game and post the save for people to take a look at and comment on.

From your original post, it seems like your goals are all over the place and there needs to be more focus, but it's really hard to give much advice without a little more informaiton.

[Lord Avalon]

Greetings, Melboz99:

If you're trying to snag a religion, starting with Mysticism will help. Fishing, too. Having a Financial leader can help with the right tiles.

You will need to work tiles with to boost your research rate. Oases are good, and fishing enables you to work water tiles. Also to start with building a workboat, which won't prevent the city from growing. Also look for some special on a river.

If you don't have Mysticism, start with that, then probably shoot for Hinduism (or Judaism). And don't build any workers or settlers till after you've got it.

If you don't have any of these tiles, then skip the religion path.

It's still possible to get Confucianism first, but you could stick with no religion, see what becomes the dominant religion and switch to that to get the brothers of the faith diplo bonus (or even wait to see if someone asks/demands you switch to a religion you want to be).

Of course, another way to get religion is to see where the holy cities are and take them.

[Ming]

Of course, another way to get religion is to see where the holy cities are and take them.

My favorite way of doing so

[wodan11]

Don't cross the streams, Ray.

"get religion" =/= "holy city"

There are definite benefits in having a state religion, and in having the same state religion as one or more AIs.

There are benefits to owning a holy city (whether it's your state religion or not).

benefits of state religion =/= benefits of owning one or more holy cities

[wodan11]

benefits of state religion =/= benefits of owning one or more holy cities

What that means is the player can have one, or the other, or both. Each has value independent of the other.

And now to relate this back to my previous suggestions: There's absolutely nothing wrong with letting Isabella's religion spread to you, adopting it, and otherwise totally ignoring religions.

[Lord Avalon]

Don't cross the streams, Ray.

"get religion" =/= "holy city"

There are definite benefits in having a state religion, and in having the same state religion as one or more AIs.

There are benefits to owning a holy city (whether it's your state religion or not).

benefits of state religion =/= benefits of owning one or more holy cities

See, when you take "get religion" and "holy city" out of the context of the whole phrase, then you miss the point.

Perhaps I should have used a ?

[wodan11]

Yeah, tongue-in-cheek statements don't really work well when giving advice.

[Norselord]

I find that if you are going to found a religion, you have two choices:
1) Either be committed to spreading and converting other civs.
2) Or be ready to have some of the religious psychos declare war on you with little notice.

I find that if I found a religion, i am not very good in spreading it faster than the other founders, as a result my diplo suffers, and Isabella invades. But if you can get the Library of Sangkor, Spiral Minaret, and the other one, then founding a religion can be very nice.

If on turn 3 or 4 or so you run into a scout from one of the 'religious' civs, you may as well forget trying to be the first to the founder techs, and spend your energy on the infrastructure (wheel/granary/farming/fishing/husbandry) or war (mining/BW) branches of the tech tree, and trade for the religious techs when a founder has spread it to your empire.

As an aside, I do recall reading a post on civfanatics where someone was able to get EVERY religion on a pretty high difficulty setting.

And another aside is that the Apostelic Palace isn't as great as you might think. Many times i have played to get christianity and then build the AP so that i could try to influence the pre-UN world, only to have some clown with a greater population win the vote.

[Calvin Vu]

I've given up on getting the early religions.

The reason is that if I happen to have Mysticism and a good starting location commerce-wise and go for either Buddhism or Hinduism then the other civs almost always adopt the other religion and I end up getting a big diplomatic hit from everybody. I can't compete against the AIs in spamming missionaries to spread my religion around.

I just wait until all the other civs adopt their state religions and then I pick the one that give me the most diplomatic benefit.

And while the civs with the holy cities spam missionaries, I will be spamming troops ...

[Lord Avalon]

Founding a religion doesn't mean you have to adopt it as your state religion. For diplomatic purposes you can wait.

The trick with the Apostolic Palace (AP) is to switch to Christianity (assuming you're not choosing religions) before it's done, spread Christianity to all your cities and, if an AI doesn't have it, to their worst city (combo of smallest size and worst production). That way you'll have the most votes.

If you consider that an exploit, you'll need to suck up to enough of your AP religion brethren to have the most votes. That's beyond my diplomatic skills (as I'm not that willing to suck up).

Of course if you're not playing at a high difficulty level, and if you happen to have a lot of nonaggressive AIs, you might not have to suck up to get their votes.

Other options: don't build the AP and go raze that city; play with Diplomatic Victory off, so it's not available.

[rah]

Yeah, I'm finding myself not adopting a religion early more often.
It does offer a few benefits. You don't waste a turn in anarchy, you get the culture benefit from every religion if you don't adopt one, and no diplo hit. If you research monarchy early, the lack of that one happy doesn't really make much difference. I don't research Mono till after CIVIL Service so I can change both civics in one turn. (and if timing is right that's usually when my third GP comes so I can do the changes for free. At that point you know what religion is going to help you the most diplo wise.