Conquests AI changes

[Arnelos]

I'm playing a game as Portugal at Monarch level with Large, Archipelago, 12 civs, 80% water, warm, arid, 5 billion years.

I'm researching Education right now and none of the AI's have even made it out of the Ancient Age yet (most are still Despotisms).

I've already conquered the Dutch (on my island) and the Hittites (on the neighboring island, with colonies on 2 other islands on the other side of me which they formed while I was taking out the Dutch).

Given how REDICULOUSLY easy this game has been on Monarch level, I agree with others that the game has gotten a good bit easier. The fact that the AI didn't build curraghs certainly didn't help it, but I've noticed that seafaring trait AI civs seem to beeline for Map Making and build plenty of galleys, so the seafaring AI civs are far better off than the non-seafaring civs right now (moreso because of the 80% water archipelago map).

Now the fact that I built the Great Lighthouse and I'm a seafaring civ myself is just absolutely incredible. I had 5-movement galleys that could travel on sea tiles by the end of the Ancient Age, which was also when I started my GA (under Monarchy, since I had a number of high pop cities in a fairly compact island civ). Understandably, I had contact with every civ on the board while all of the AI civs only had contact with their immediate neighbors. Their inability to trade maps with each other while I've been able to map most of the map is a huge advantage.

Larger archipelago maps already disadvantaged the AI by separating them from one another, but I imagine that the new corruption rules and the lack of building curraghs are what has made things worse for the AI.

I'll grant that having my GA at the start of the Middle Age as I was maping the entire planet certainly boosted my power and building the Great Library is always critical on a large archipelago map, but STILL.... this game is a cakewalk.

[Fried-Psitalon]

You'll note there are two more difficulty levels higher than Monarch now, yes?

Also bear in mind you're playing a seafaring civ in an environment tailor-made to the strengths of said civ, much like playing the Maya on a barb-raging pangea, or the Russians on a sedentary-barb pangea.

I dare say Portugal on a Pangea might not be quite so overpowering, much like the Maya enslavement would be rather dull with no barbs on an archipelago.

[Arnelos]

As for the last game I played, it was as the English, though on a SMALL archipelago map (only 70% water, temperate, normal, 4 billion years, 6 civs). I was lucky to start on a fairly sizable island with no neighbors, but I got royally screwed to start on an island without iron, horses, and NO luxuries!.

I quickly expanded to a neighboring island that was half tundra and mountains, but at least had a source of iron. I also expanded to a tiny 6-tile island with a source of horses. I got my only luxuries (fur and gems) along with a second source of iron by expanding to the large island that the Americans never finished working across (since the entire central area of that island was tundra, that was little surprise and I took the fertiles lands on my side of the tundra).

The English are INCREDIBLY powerful as a civ now, with commercial and seafaring together giving them quite an impressive boost to their income on maps with lots of coasts (which archipelago maps have in abundance). In fact, the English are IDEALLY suited to archipelago maps, which result in more spread out empires (for which commercial is good) with many coastal cities (at which seafaring excells) and lots of water in between (for which seafaring movement bonus and sea-based improvement building bonuses are very handy). Combine with this their rather upgraded UU the delay in the coming of ironclads (not to mention that ironclads may not even come at all given that it's now an optional tech) and the English are the powerhouse they should be.

I expanded so well and was able to keep up with my opponents on Monarch level in tech without much trouble. By the start of my GA (using Man-O-War's against the Aztecs, who were trying to conquer the Sumerians on their shared continent-sized island), I was already pulling well ahead of the AI in tech and it wasn't anywhere close by the time I was getting into the Industrial Age. By the time I was working on techs in the Modern Age and using bombers and modern armor to conquer the Americans and then bomb the Russians back to the stone age, the AI was still running about with cavalry and riflemen and was still trying to face my battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and carriers with frigates! My Man-O-War's (including all of the enslaved extra Man-O-Wars) were useful up to the end of the game!

So yeah, Monarch level seems a bit easier than it used to be. I mean, I invaded the Americans (the tech leader among the AI) with Marines, Modern Armor, Battleships, and Carriers with Bombers while they defended with cavalry and riflemen. They never had a prayer.

I won a space race victory simply because (as normal), not only do I love the space race victory, but I'm typically too lazy by that point in a game to bother going for a domination victory

One thing to comment on is how incredibly cool the enslave ability is for the Man-O-War. I parked a few Man-O-War's off of the Aztec's only source of horses (a coastal tile!) and just kept bombarding it every time the Aztecs came back with workers to clear up the craters and rebuild the roads. Since the Aztecs came at me with a steady stream of frigates throughout the game which I could reliably kill with a stack of Man-O-War's and every few of which would be enslaved into ANOTHER (regular) Man-O-War, that stack just kept growing in size. I don't remember how many Man-O-War's I had at game's end, but since the AI was still using frigates, they were still pretty useful when I fought the Russians (though obviously my enormous force of bombers combined with my fleet of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submaries was far MORE useful).

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
You'll note there are two more difficulty levels higher than Monarch now, yes?

In PTW, I typically would play Monarch or Emperor. That said, even when using the Americans on a pangea map or an easy civ like the Persians or Egyptians, Monarch has still rarely been that easy.

Emperor level used to present more of a challenge to me since I have refused (on the principle that it prevents the game from being fun) to micromanage in most of my single-player games (I do micromanage in PBEM games... competition brings that out and in a PBEM you have lots of time). I can certainly play at Emperor level and beat it under PTW and it is challenging, I just didn't find it particularly fun.

It seems that if each level has gotten easier, perhaps I should progress to normally playing at Emperor and playing my challenging games at the levels higher than that

Also bear in mind you're playing a seafaring civ in an environment tailor-made to the strengths of said civ, much like playing the Maya on a barb-raging pangea, or the Russians on a sedentary-barb pangea.

I dare say Portugal on a Pangea might not be quite so overpowering, much like the Maya enslavement would be rather dull with no barbs on an archipelago.

This is a good point. It certainly does make a game easier if you play a civ well suited to the map conditions. That said, that wouldn't by itself explain just how easy these games have been.

[Dominae]

I agree with Fried that people stating that their Monarch games are way too easy are not exactly giving the game a fair chance. First of all, most of you guys should be playing Emperor. Second, abusing the new traits by choosing the right map settings (restarting to get that super Rivers Agr. start, or selecting Large Pangea maps for Sea.) will not give you a great idea of how the game is supposed to work on average.

Nonetheless, I must reiterate that there is most definitely a problem with Seafaring. It's major advantage revolves around exploiting the AI (suicide runs, Curraghs, tech whoring).

Three solutions (not perfect, but realistic):

1. Teach the AI to build (and use!) Curraghs.
2. Increase the cost of Curraghs, the idea being that if it's a human-only unit making it more expensive balances it.
3. Give Seafaring civs a Curragh at the start, and remove the option to build more of them.

I would be happiest with the third option (go ahead, let your sole Curragh commit suicide!).


Dominae

[vmxa1]

I only played one game (with seafaring) and it was only mid way into middle ages, but I went to all islands and never saw any either. They waited for gallies and never went to any squares that were out of range.
I have yet to see any of the curraghs or whatever they are called.
So I have to agreee with Dom, that is going to make exploiting a real issue on maps with lots of water.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Dominae
3. Give Seafaring civs a Curragh at the start, and remove the option to build more of them.

I would be happiest with the third option (go ahead, let your sole Curragh commit suicide!).

Which is a perfectly good balancer as long as the human player isn't using the reloading exploit

[Traelin]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Hehe Alva, in 1.07 and the earlier patches I was one of the most active Civ3 posters. Now the game looks like it might be sufficiently improved for me to return.

[throws down gauntlet]

Last one to beat Sid smells bad!

Believe me, it's worth the return. Once I finish this game I gotta step away though, it's just eating up way too much of my life.

[Arrian]

Perhaps the AI doesn't build curraghs because it has no transport capacity. Ever see an empty AI ship? They ALWAYS stick something on there before they send it out. You can't do that with a curragh. Perhaps that's why the AI doesn't build them.

Oh, and the Iroquois rock, btw. I like them much better now.

Armies also rock. 3x Cavalry is just a MONSTER. 6/3/4 with blitz. My Cav army is destroying China almost all by itself.

The AI appears to be ignoring Literature... but again, small sample size.

-Arrian

[notyoueither]

I agree with Fried that people stating that their Monarch games are way too easy are not exactly giving the game a fair chance. First of all, most of you guys should be playing Emperor. Second, abusing the new traits by choosing the right map settings (restarting to get that super Rivers Agr. start, or selecting Large Pangea maps for Sea.) will not give you a great idea of how the game is supposed to work on average.

There is such a thing as playing something managable to figure out what's new, not to mention to have fun.

And I didn't think playing Rome with no luxuries within 18 tiles of my start was that overpowering.

Now, whatever level we are playing the game, we do have some idea of how the game should play out. We know that the AI is falling way further behind in tech than it should.

We can observe that the AI is never building certain units. The best solution for that would most likely be to add 1 unit capacity to the Curragh.

[alexman]

I wonder if adding missile or aircraft transport capacity to the curragh would be enough to convince the AI to build it...

[Catt]

On the issue of "overall AI effectiveness" (not addressing specific builds like curraghs and strategies around specific builds) I think the GPT Bug is so significant that it is very difficult to properly evaluate the AI's changed abilities, if any, regarding tech advances etc. In my one game, the Sumerians became a gigantic Killer AI that secured and held the tech lead for a long time -- they did so in part because they successfully sucked gpt deals from other AIs and of course received double their money. While the Sumerians were spending 100% on science, they were also piling up 10,000+ gold in the treasury and rush-buying numerous improvements all over the place. Conversely, when I started raking in gpt payments, everyone but the Sumerians fell back pretty quickly.

The GPT Bug distorts an awful lot, since mountains of gold allows the Ai to upgrade, to build better infrastructure, etc. The specifics in my game wouldn't have happened without the GPT Bug and so it makes it very hard for me to realisitically evaluate any overall changes (not to mention the fact that I've only played one game )

Catt

[Arrian]

I can't remember the last time I built the Pyramids *and* the Great Library (built, no leader rushing) on Monarch. I even switched to republic (4 turns of anarchy, IIRC) during the GL build.

There is more going on than just the contact thing. There were three decent AI civs on my continent, and I blew them away (there was also a 4th civ, but I crippled them early by buying a worker and bopping their first settler team).

I suspect too much wonder building... I could be wrong, but with the addition of Zeus, Mausollos, and Artemis there just may be too many.

Oh, and I think I'm going to agree with those who feel the new bombard rules are the wrong way to go. With 2 catapults & a stack of archers, defended by 2 spearmen, I crushed the Maya. I had no iron and no horses. But with the cats, the number of which eventually increased to 4, pretty reliably taking 1 hp off of the defending spears/Javs, my casualties were very low. In fact, I killed about 10 Jav chuckers* before finally losing to one, in the last city they had, and it enslaved my unit, so I ended up getting a worker back out of the deal. Good luck was involved, of course, but IIRC, every Jav I attacked had 2hp, due to the cats. After that, I had iron and horses. Horses. Iroquois. Can you guess what happened to the English?

-Arrian

* - 10 Javs = 300 shields, folks. That, plus the fact that the Maya built Massollos in Chichen Itza = 600 shields of production. No wonder they went down so easily.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by notyoueither
There is such a thing as playing something managable to figure out what's new, not to mention to have fun.

My point is that there's no use in complaining when "manageable" is actually "easy". Maybe I'm just bitter because my first game on Demigod was actually rather difficult (all Horses claimed before I had The Wheel, closest Iron source over 20 tiles away in the middle of Jungle and Mountains).



Concerning the Curragh: I'm not sure it's a good idea to give it transport capacity. The AI would probably load units onto it right away, which is not that great in the early-game. alexman's idea/hack is intriguing...will it work?

I still prefer the "only Seafaring civs get a Curragh" solution. It has nice symmetry with the Expansionist trait. It makes Seafaring civs unique by making only them able to explore coastlines before Map Making. It keeps the trait powerful while addressing the major problems (Curraghs are an unfairly good unit against the AI because of the suicide strategy, even in non-Seafaring hands).


Dominae

[Arrian]

It would suck if that first curragh got sunk by a barb galley, though. Still, I think that might be a good solution.

And I'm not complaining, per se, about doing really well on Monarch. I'm enjoying myself, and I recognize that the "solution" to this "problem" is to move up in difficulty. That being said, we're talking about how the AI is doing here, and I think it is good that we have people reporting their experiences on various difficulty levels. NYE, myself and several others are trying it out on Monarch. You're playing Demigod. Others are no doubt trying Emperor. Between all of us, we should get a good idea of what the AI is doing right, and what it's doing wrong.

The initial feedback is that Monarch level is now easier. Again, it's not a complaint (at least from me). It's an observation.

-Arrian