Setting up IP games XLIX

[rah]

we may be too late

[Ming]

Yeah... it sure ended up that way...

Thanks for the duel. At least we played.

[atawa]

Hopr you did better then war and me in the 3-way, rah was pretty much kicking our arse the whole game.

[Ming]

We started one game... and by 3400, I still had no city sites in view... nothing... no specials or even rivers. I conceeded that one.

The second one, we both got off to a slow start, and it was pretty even. I beat him to HG by a turn, and sciences and pop were pretty close when we were both ready to pass out I think he was about 3/4 of inch ahead on the PG... but it was still anybodies game.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Sounds like a good matchup

How do you deal with the AI in a duel?

[Ming]

We don't... We usually don't play with AI's. They are just "speed bumps" if you include them. The person who starts near an AI can usually rape them and get an unfair advantage. It's far more fun, interesting, and fair to not play with moronic AI's in the game.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Ming
We don't... We usually don't play with AI's. They are just "speed bumps" if you include them. The person who starts near an AI can usually rape them and get an unfair advantage. It's far more fun, interesting, and fair to not play with moronic AI's in the game.

Sorry, I thought there was a minimum of 3 civs per game... I never play SP with less than 7, so I never really look at that menu

[Ming]

I wonder why people like having them in the game. I play MP so I don't have to be bored playing the AI. Adding some into a MP game just doesn't make sense for me

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Ming


I wonder why people like having them in the game. I play MP so I don't have to be bored playing the AI. Adding some into a MP game just doesn't make sense for me

I agree... it wouldn't be fair to have AIs in MP.

SP is kind of dull without them, though.

[Ljube]

Originally posted by Ming


I wonder why people like having them in the game. I play MP so I don't have to be bored playing the AI. Adding some into a MP game just doesn't make sense for me

Actually it does.
An AI nearby can be a balancing factor. Just imagine the following situation: I play a duel with a good friend who is slightly less skilled than me, so I let him be the host with bonus techs. One time, he got so many techs and such a good land that he easily beat me to almost all wonders. I was even further handicapped by being on a small island and having opened a hut with my second starting settler and discovered barbarian horseman.

Now, that’s grounds for laying the arms, is it not?
But did I do that? Of course not.
Why? Because there are AIs in the game that can be exploited.

Need I tell you how this ended?
Well, being inadequate and moderate (strong only near the end of the game), I easily won the favour of the AI players (The Spanish were all the times Enthusiastic and sometimes Worshipful). Then, I employed them to research science for me. I instructed them well, so they kept researching the different paths. Of course, none of them would even speak to my friend, but all of them were exchanging techs with me. On top of it, the Sioux built the Colossus in Little Big Horn, a city only 15 tiles from my main island, so I traded with them. I stayed in Communism for the whole game, celebrating at 30% lux and collecting 70 % tax and was able to send the spaceship a year before my friend and to repulse his last ditch attack on my capital.

[atawa]

In a duel there usualy are no spaceships

But I played a couple of duels with 5 AI before on a small map and it was quite fun

[Ljube]

I agree there aren't many duels that end in a space race. But the settings facilitated such end. It was deity 1x1x, 10000 tiles (80x125), normal land mass, archipelago. We were very far apart and it wasn't profitable for any one of us to launch an assault on the other one. So it ended up as an epic saga of combat between a corrupt democracy (my friend) and People’s Republic (me). Of course, I had my Warsaw Pact allies with me (Sioux, Spanish, English, Babs and French).

[rah]

Originally posted by atawa
In a duel there usualy are no spaceships

Yes, the game games rarely stay even that long.

[Ming]

The AI's offer no challange what so ever... As I said, speed bumps at best. They just get in the way of the real fight

[Ljube]

One time, again letting my friend host and get the bonus techs, I started on an island with the Aztecs. This has been exploit to the extreme. Never before and again have I had such a piggy bank and a personal Great Library near me. They pumped me with 150 - 300 gold each turn and sometimes with a tech or two. It was just impossible to bear.

I kind of like that. I enjoy exploiting the AI and gaining unfair advantages, for there is nothing that can irritate people more than the situation described in the previous paragraph.