Conquests AI changes

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by The diplomat


I think the Barbs are made to be smarter now. They use to just storm against a city eventhough it was hopeless. Now, they will wait and pick off isolated units, workers, settlers and pillage, if they can't attack a city.

They had stop that stuff back in PTW.

[vmxa1]

So how do like those Ancient Calv in any army? I made one with 3 elites (already created GL's). 18 HP's, man and then got Pentagon and added a 4th vet, so it was 23 HP's. This was before Rifles had shown up, so they were just a terror. Knights and Muskets were all that they faced.

[PogueMahone]

That's the Knights Templar, not the Mausolleum (which just gives 3 happy faces in one city... I built it, but it's really nothing special).

The Crusader unit is nice, but not the monster that the Ancient Cav is. 5/3/1 represents a +25% attack and +50% defense from the primary slowmover attack unit of its era.

The Ancient Cav gets +50% attack, +100% defense, +1hp from the primary fastmover attack unit of its era.

-Arrian
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Yeah but you also have to factor in the ability the crusaders have to build fortresses. They build them in 6 turns on flat land, 11 on hills. Then bring in some workers to put up some barricades and you have a pretty good defensive wall going.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by vmxa1
So how do like those Ancient Calv in any army? I made one with 3 elites (already created GL's). 18 HP's, man and then got Pentagon and added a 4th vet, so it was 23 HP's. This was before Rifles had shown up, so they were just a terror. Knights and Muskets were all that they faced.

/me salivates

I have yet to generate a Leader (mil or sci) in Conquests.

Why not add a Knight or Cavalry as the 4th unit, though? Purity?

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Yeah but you also have to factor in the ability the crusaders have to build fortresses. They build them in 6 turns on flat land, 11 on hills. Then bring in some workers to put up some barricades and you have a pretty good defensive wall going.

I totally forgot about that. That is a nice little boost (one that the legionary should have as well). But I doubt I will often find this useful.

-Arrian

[RobC]

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by PogueMahone
Yeah but you also have to factor in the ability the crusaders have to build fortresses. They build them in 6 turns on flat land, 11 on hills. Then bring in some workers to put up some barricades and you have a pretty good defensive wall going.

I think if you allow them to build forts, you might as well allow them to build barricades too. Then again, in my mod I just gave them enslavement (gaining 'converts' at the point of a sword)

[PogueMahone]

Yeah, I agree. If they can make one, why not the other? Actually, I very rarely used fortresses before getting Conquests, but now with the added features of the barricade I've been utilizing them alot more.

Plus, being able to build fortresses with a unit that otherwise would just be fortified and doing nothing is pretty cool. There's no real reason NOT to build them.

[notyoueither]

My game on Monarch is going a lot like Arrian's tech wise. I had a massive lead by late in the Medieval age. That gap has narrowed now, but I'm still well ahead early in the Industrial age (I have Steam, Industrialization, and Electricity that no one else does).

Now if only I had started closer to luxuries...

[Arrian]

What civ/settings, NYE? Trying out a new civ, or going with the old standby, Roma?

Check out Alexman's corruption thread, btw.

-Arrian

[dexters]

Originally posted by Arrian
[disclaimer: sample size of 1, YMMV]

Something's a bit off. I played well, but not great. I did make some mistakes. My start spot itself was nice, but the surrounding land was so-so. My luck has been so-so as well. No catastrophes, but no leaders either. And yet I'm winning by so much... yeah, I feel like something's off.

-Arrian

p.s. Ancient Cav do not upgrade, it seems. Interesting. For some reason I assumed they would.

It's highly dependent on which Civ is drawn as your rival. I had played a Monarch PTW game (pangea) as a kind of welcome party for myself in anticipation for C3C since I had been out of the Civ3 loop for a few months. I had an easy time there. I took control of the tech tree in the ealry Industrial/late middle ages and never reliquished it. It was just the luck that the Persians and the Celts, the two biggest civ in that game went to war fairly early on and I tagged along with the Persians and grabbed cities. The war also slowed the research pace, allowing me to catch up. I'm assuming that there may have been several early wars in your games that slowed the AI down?

When I switched to C3C, my first couple of monarch games were just disasters. I played like I did before but fell behind the tech tree considerably. The AI civs would have these giant swings where they'd go from 3 techs behind me to 4 techs ahead. And It seems to me like the AI has improved arbitrage trading abilities. If it gets a tech several civs don't have, but not necessarily a monopoly, it will trade that tech around and grab several techs in return.

You seem to have been extremely lucky to grab the new wonders. I usually have trouble grabbing those, but perhaps I just didn't put enough priority getting them. Certainly ancient Cavs make a huge difference. I've seen, in my debug game, the AI use the Cav to great effect by essentially wiping out the Ottoman presence on a continent, leaving them to OCC in an island somewhere.


Also, in my last Monarch game, which I won by space race, I had the Iroquious in the game and a tough early half. Their agricultural + commercial trait made them increadibly dominant both in population and research. They had Size 33 well before mine reached Size 20. Think about that. Their core cities were 33, 25, 26 pop sizes, which made them extremely productive even under Fascism. Iroquious are profilic REXers in C3C, and their commercial trait allows them to rake in the dough from distant colonies.

The only way I survived was I pulled a Machiavellian trick out my bag and simply never made war with them and made them my strategic partner. Doing that however meant I had to face the Hittites, which had the largest land, largest pop and were #1 in the middle ages. It cost me my 20 turn GA cranking out Samurais just so I wouldn't be overwhelmed. If I hadn't had that Ga there, that was probably when I was crushed.

[Arrian]

I'm assuming that there may have been several early wars in your games that slowed the AI down?

Not really... the civs I met early were: India, Inca, Russia, Spain. To my knowledge, the only wars that went on involved me.

The Indians were cut off from the others (by me) and didn't make contact until about two turns before I wiped them out. They could have made contact easily with a curragh.

The Russians, Incans & Spanish all knew each other. But now I've knocked Russia to 1 city and am chewing on the Spanish.

I was ahead on the Republic path, but behind on some techs until I traded Republic around (Construction, Polytheism, HBR).

So basically, you had two groups of 3 AI civs in contact with one another (Inca/Russia/Spain, Iroquois/Celts/I forget), one of which knew me too, and then one civ that only knew me. That surely slowed tech down some.

-Arrian

[dexters]

Originally posted by Arrian


Not really... the civs I met early were: India, Inca, Russia, Spain. To my knowledge, the only wars that went on involved me.

The Indians were cut off from the others (by me) and didn't make contact until about two turns before I wiped them out. They could have made contact easily with a curragh.

The Russians, Incans & Spanish all knew each other. But now I've knocked Russia to 1 city and am chewing on the Spanish.

I was ahead on the Republic path, but behind on some techs until I traded Republic around (Construction, Polytheism, HBR).

So basically, you had two groups of 3 AI civs in contact with one another (Inca/Russia/Spain, Iroquois/Celts/I forget), one of which knew me too, and then one civ that only knew me. That surely slowed tech down some.

-Arrian

Ok. I just checked your report again and it's a continents game, so the dynamics is probably a little different. All my games so far were Pangea/Standard. I haven't had my C3C continents game yet. Maybe this weekend.

How early did you make contact with the other continent? I know in larger continents games, contact won't be made until the middle ages and that sort of leads into separate worlds almost where each continent were on their own branch of the tech tree and there would be wars unseen and unheard of.

[Arrian]

I made contact right after researching Navigation. I tried three suicide runs (1 curragh, 2 galley) which failed. So my first contact was with a caravel. I don't remember the year.

I'm well ahead of them.

-Arrian

[asleepathewheel]

I just realized that I don't have to pay upkeep for captured artillery. shows up along with the captured workers on the f3 screen



And I'm loving Zeus. Its like having an extra war machine city, really powerful.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Arrian
Why not add a Knight or Cavalry as the 4th unit, though? Purity?

-Arrian

That's my kinda warmonger!